Is that a circular hole punch? Or a pill-shaped cutout? Wait, it’s both. According to a new leak, the iPhone 14 Pro and its sibling Max will ditch the notch in favor of an odd arrangement that includes both a circular cutout and a pill-shaped cutout neatly laid out in a row. Whether this is attractive is debatable, but it certainly hasn’t been attempted before by a smartphone maker.
Display supply chain expert Ross Young, who has a pretty accurate track record with Apple’s display predictions, tweeted what appears to be an engineered blueprint for an iPhone 14 Pro model. There are two distinct cutouts, a design we haven’t seen on a phone until now. Samsung has a slew of phones with a single circular cutout, Motorola has a phone with two separate camera points, and Huawei has been true to the pill-shaped design for a few years. But the two elements have never been mixed up like this.
We now believe Apple will have a hole + pill design on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. The smaller hole will not be invisible… The two-hole concept will be unique to Apple, like the notch, not similar to all of Huawei’s pill models… Let’s see these new renderings pic.twitter.com/Udt8cTKzPZ
– Ross Young (@DSCCRoss) January 12, 2022
What are these cuts used for? Young mentioned in a later tweet that the circular hole houses the dot projector, while the pill-shaped cutout houses the front camera and infrared sensor. For people new to the engineering behind Apple’s Face ID and its True Depth camera system, it includes a dot projector that paints over 30,000 invisible infrared dots on a face to create a 3D map. The infrared camera reads this card and creates an image that matches a pattern stored securely on the iPhone to unlock the device.
Young mentions that the circular hole housing the Dot Projector will not be visible, meaning only a pill-shaped cutout will be visible to the naked eye. To give an idea of what the real thing might look like, here is a conceptual render created by a graphic artist by the name 4RMD:
Digital Trend’s Adam Doud is still not convinced Apple will drop the notch because it goes against the grain. However, personally, I think it’s high time Apple gave up the big cut and went for a modern design language. But as usual, treat the latest iPhone 14 Pro rumor with a healthy dose of skepticism.
