Six days before Apple’s September 9 event, the Taiwanese research firm TrendForce put a number on the foldable iPhone. MacRumors reported the estimate on Thursday: a starting price of $2,099 to $2,299 in the United States, with the highest-end configurations passing $3,000. Apple has said nothing about price. TrendForce is a supply chain research house rather than a source inside the company, so this is an informed estimate and not a leaked price list.

The number is worth sitting with anyway. The most expensive iPhone on sale today is the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which starts at $1,199. A $2,099 start would put the foldable about $900 above that, and the top configuration would cost more than twice as much again as the cheapest one. Foldable phones are expensive everywhere, and on this estimate Apple would be entering the category at the top of it rather than undercutting anybody.

The spec list is the more interesting half. TrendForce expects a 5.5-inch outer OLED screen and a 7.8-inch inner one with ProMotion running up to 120Hz, Touch ID rather than Face ID, and an A20 Pro chip built on TSMC’s 2-nanometer process. It puts 12GB of RAM inside, with storage tiers at 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. Cameras come in at 24 megapixels on the front, and two 48-megapixel sensors on the back, a Wide and an Ultra Wide.

What is not on that list is a telephoto camera. TrendForce names a Wide and an Ultra Wide and nothing longer, so on this estimate the most expensive iPhone Apple has ever built would have two rear cameras. The Pro models have three. A first-generation product trades something away and this would be a reasonable thing to trade, but it is the first thing to check when the hardware is on stage.

The 2TB tier is where the $3,000 comes from, and it is also the part of the estimate that rests on the least. Memory prices are the reason every iPhone estimate has moved this year, so the gap between the bottom and the top of this lineup is being set by a component market rather than by anything Apple designed.

The Ultra name comes from earlier reporting rather than from Apple. MacRumors credits Filipe Espósito, who published it at Macworld and now writes for Engadget. Apple has used Ultra on a watch and on chips and has never put it on a phone, so a foldable arriving as the iPhone Ultra would be the first.

Nothing here is settled. One research firm has estimated a price and a spec sheet for a product Apple has not acknowledged in detail, and the last few weeks have produced several such estimates with different numbers in them. Apple answers all of it on September 9.