According to a Bloomberg report
published last week, Apple is working on a 2018 iPad Pro that’ll take the edge-to-edge display and Face ID sensor from the iPhone X, and put them into tablet form.
This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone — Touch ID jumped into the iPad a year after it made its iPhone debut, and Apple does have a tendency to test new features on the iPhone range before rolling them out to all devices. But the idea of Face ID coming to the iPad brings up one obvious question: The notch.
In order to get the TrueDepth camera that Face ID needs into the iPhone X, Apple carved out a notch at the top of the new iPhone’s screen. Although testing shows that it’s not as intrusive as it might seem, it’s still not an ideal design. On an iPad that’s primarily designed to watch movies, it would be far more of a problem.
Luckily, the Bloomberg report specifies that the 2018 iPad likely won’t have the iPhone X’s OLED display, and therefore won’t get a “true” edge-to-edge display. That also means that Apple will be able to fit whatever sensors it needs into the bezel, removing the need for a notch. Win some, lose some.
iDropNews has put together renders of what a 2018 iPad with Face ID and minimal bezels would look like, and to be frank, you’re going to want one. The most recent 10.5-inch iPad Pro has been a hit, largely because of the shurnk bezels. It makes a huge difference on a tablet — you can fit the same size screen into a small device, or get a laptop-sized screen you can wield with one hand.
