Apple is finally planning to kill the inelegant kludge (notch) exclusively in the the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max later this year, replacing it with a less obtrusive pill and hole punch design to house the front-facing TrueDepth Camera system.
Display analyst Ross Young today reiterated his expectations for the iPhone 14 lineup and provided some color on what’s coming in the future.
The pill-shaped Face ID cutout + camera cutout combination is going to be about the same width as the notch, according to Young, but it will “certainly save some pixels above the holes.”
After implementing the new design in the iPhone 14 Pro models, Young believes that Apple will expand it to the entire iPhone 15 lineup in 2023, bringing the updated look to even the lower-cost iPhone 15 options.
Young says that there’s a chance the pill and holes could get smaller in 2023 than they are in 2022, freeing up more display space. Citing leaks on Chinese social network Weibo, Young speculates that the camera cutout in the iPhone 14 could measure in at 5.631mm, which leaves room to shrink it down next year.
MacDailyNews Take: Still inelegant, but slightly less so, however, Young does write that Apple plans to eventually improve this arrangement by replacing the pill-shaped TrueDepth sensors under the display, removing the pill-shaped cutout. Alas, that technology is not expected to be ready for the 2023 iPhone launch.
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I find the supposed pill and punch design much more inelegant than the notch. Yuk!
Dot Dot Dot Dash (Pill) Dash (Pill) Dash (Pill) Dot Dot Dot
Nothing screams SOS louder than that Pill Dot proposed design!
I was also thinking ‘morse code’. Why didn’t they just go with a single ‘pill’ cutout?
With a hole punch screen it should be possible to give the impression that you can peep behind the hole by using pseudo 3D effects. The background image would appear to be a little distance behind the hole and when you tilt the iPhone, the background image would shift so that you can see the part of the image which was previously obscured by the black hole.
The parallax effect you suggest may be patented by Amazon back when they had developed and released their ill-fated smartphone.
The “inelegant” notch and dash-dot DO serve a secondary indirect purpose. It shows at a glance which way is up without looking more closely for the side buttons. Good ol’ Home Button with Touch ID serves same function including tactile indication (without the kludge).
Unlike the Apple remote, the majority of things people use a smartphone for would probably not be affected by an ‘upside down’ orientation on devices that have a full top to bottom touch display with auto screen rotation.
It does matter, even if it did automatic screen rotation (currently does not for vertical iPhone), because volume control and power buttons are on specific sides. And camera is at the top end. It matters which end is up.