Apple made perhaps the biggest change to iPhone design in years with the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, as those phones finally got rid of the notch and replaced it with Dynamic Island’s innovative island. But the ultimate goal could be to completely hide Face ID and camera components, and we may see the next step in that direction with the iPhone 16 Pro.
This is evident from the report on electric (opens in a new tab) (by Pocket Lint (opens in a new tab)), which states that the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will have Face ID components hidden under the screen, similar to how many Android phones now have fingerprint scanners under the display.
This won’t completely eliminate the camera cutout as the camera itself will reportedly still be visible, but it may allow Apple to reduce its size to a small hole; as we’ve seen on many Android phones (which don’t have Face ID components to fight with).
The Elec says this change will only come to the Pro models initially, and that this too is just an adapter, with the ultimate goal of also hiding the selfie camera under the screen, so there’s no notch or other break in the display.
The website does not indicate when Apple might achieve this. It’s something we’ve already seen on some Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, but there the implementation is imperfect, the camera is still hard to see and image quality suffers (the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra does a better job of stealth, but still does not meet the quality requirements). Apple will likely wait until the technology is perfected.
It’s unclear what these changes would mean for Dynamic Island’s functionality. Technically, Apple could still have a black bubble “island” at the top of the display, but since the current implementation was created out of necessity to hide and use the existing camera cutouts, doing so on a future iPhone doesn’t seem redundant.
Of course, we’d take these claims with a grain of salt anyway, but Apple’s likely goal is to reduce – and eventually remove – the notches, it’s just a matter of when. Other sources, such as credible analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, previously pointed to 2024, adding fuel to the fire around the idea that the iPhone 16 Pro would be the first to have underexposed Face ID.
Analysis: Updates are likely to come to vanilla models as well
While it looks like only the Pro models will have underexposed Face ID initially, Apple is unlikely to forget about the Standard and Plus models.
This report in The Elec states that the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will launch this year with Dynamic Island, meaning all four models will have this design before the Pro versions of the iPhone 16 will take the next step next year.
The exact same claim was recently made by Mark Gurman, who has a good track record on Apple information, so it’s likely to be the case.
This would mean the standard iPhone models would get Dynamic Island just one year after the Pro models, so we could see the same thing happening with the move to Face ID below the display – in which case you can expect the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Plus to get it. However, we wouldn’t expect any of these changes in the iPhone SE 4.