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iPhone 14’s hole-punch display design might have leaked

Published Jan 10th, 2022 7:31AM EST
Apple's iPhone 13 notch next to the iPhone 12 notch
Image: Christian de Looper for BGR

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The iPhone 13 series brought the iPhone’s first significant screen design update since the iPhone X. The notch that houses the TrueDepth camera system is now slightly smaller than before. Apple wants to remove it completely in future devices and eventually house the selfie came and Face ID components under the display. The next step towards that all-screen iPhone design is the hole-punch screen, which is coming to the iPhone 14 Pro models. That’s the most frequent iPhone 14 rumor right now, so the adoption of the hole-punch display design seems imminent. It turns out there’s an image leak that might give us an idea of what the iPhone 14 hole-punch “notch” will look like.

The hole-punch rumors

A steady stream of leaks claims that the hole-punch display design is decided. The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max will feature such displays, with Samsung and LG manufacturing the new screens.

Moreover, the camera opening won’t be circular, like on most Android phones. Apple has various sensors in the notch, and not all of them might go under the display. However, some components could sit under the display. Apple has already developed technology for placing Face ID and Touch ID sensors under the OLED screen. This could happen over the course of a few years, not all at once. But that’s just speculation.

For now, rumors say the hole that punches through the screen might have the shape of a pill. The iPhone 14 Pro models wouldn’t be the first phones to feature a pill-shape hole-punch selfie camera system. We’ve seen it before on Android devices, including one rare phone that features support for 3D face recognition like Face ID.

What’s interesting about these iPhone 14 hole-punch design rumors is that they come from various sources. We saw various well-known leakers mention this significant design upgrade in the past few months. Separately, reports from Korea have detailed the competition between OLED screen makers who are looking to score contacts with Apple for these particular iPhone 14 designs.

iPhone-14-Render
iPhone 14 render leaked by Front Page Tech. Image source: Front Page Tech

The iPhone 14 Pro display design leak

But we don’t have that many leaks showing the purported iPhone 14 Pro design. And the ones that do, imagine a phone with a circular hole-punch camera.

This brings us to the image in the following tweets, which might show the iPhone 14 Pro’s display.

Someone posted the image above on Twitter all the way back in mid-September before Apple unveiled the iPhone 13 series. At the time, the person said that the Face ID system is on the left. The selfie camera is on the right. The purported iPhone 14 display component was photographed from behind.

The image above resurfaced on Twitter a few days ago, with the concept below imagining what the iPhone 14 Pro would look like with two holes piercing the screen:

However, there’s a different interpretation for the iPhone 14 Pro display leak above. Someone claims that the pill “notch” sits in the center, and it’s the only hole that will be visible. The circular hole isn’t the FaceTime camera but the Face ID dot projector.

We’ll remind you we’re looking at unconfirmed leaks here. We’re in the early days of iPhone 14 rumors, so the information above might be based on earlier prototypes that Apple might have been testing internally. Given the increasing number of rumors mentioning the iPhone 14 hole-punch display, we can only expect to see more photo leaks to corroborate them. As we approach September 2022, some of them might actually give us the actual hole-punch design that Apple will use.

Chris Smith Senior Writer

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.