Earlier today, a questionable leak suggested that the iPhone 14’s pill-plus-hole-shaped cutouts wouldn’t look quite like earlier rumors had said. Now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is corroborating this, saying that Apple is planning to make the two cutouts look seamless rather than separated when in use.
iPhone 14 Pro notch changes
The rumors around the iPhone 14’s notch replacement have gone through multiple iterations over the last year. Initially, reports said the iPhone 14 Pro would use a single hole-punch cutout similar to many Android phones. Then, it was reported that Apple would actually replace the notch with two separate cutouts: one shaped like a pill and one shaped like a hole.
While the iPhone 14 Pro is still expected to feature those two cutouts, Apple is apparently planning some software trickery to make it look like one longer pill-shaped cutout. This was first reported in a sketchy leak this morning, and now Gurman has thrown his weight behind it.
In a post on Twitter, Gurman said that this rumor is “true” and that the iPhone 14 Pro display will feature a unified notch replacement that looks like it has “one wide pill shaped cutout.”
There are still some details we don’t know about this change, and it certainly throws a last-minute wrench in some of the expectations we had for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The early leaks on the iPhone 14 Pro notch replacement surfaced from the Apple supply chain. The information was based on leaks from supply chain sources, such as those working with Apple’s display partners. This is likely how the “one wide pill shaped cutout” detail was missed.
Apple is presumably using software trickery to hide the gap between the hole-shaped and pill-shaped cutouts. Because this is done in software, supply chain sources have no idea about this detail. Instead, they simply know that the display panel itself has those two separate cutouts.
To me, this design defeats the entire purpose of even bothering with removing the notch. I don’t understand what this new oblong-shaped cutout accomplishes, nor how it’s any different than the existing design of the notch. This is especially true when you remember that Apple made the notch even smaller with the iPhone 13 last year.
If Apple is using some sort of software trick to accomplish this, it also opens the door to a number of potential software bugs and issues. Time will tell, I suppose.
