Apple Launches IPhone 14 Soon, Face ID Placed Below Screen

The iPhone 14 Pro lineup will feature a pill-shaped hole design for the front camera. (photo; doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA – Rumors about Apple's upcoming iPhone launch in 2022 continue to roll on. One DylanDKT leak via Twitter has claimed that the iPhone 14 Pro lineup will feature a pill-shaped hole design for the front camera. While for the most part Apple's Face ID hardware is placed below the display, not to be an eyesore.

The report corroborates earlier rumors from prominent Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from late last year, who also claimed that the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max 2022 will switch to punch-hole cameras.

Apple made its first major changes to the iPhone's Face recognition notch with last year's iPhone 13 lineup, which featured a slightly smaller notch than the original design Apple has used since the launch of the iPhone X in 2017.

Apple moved the Face recognition array below the display while keeping the cutout reasonable: Face ID-based IR setups won't be too affected by the blur and weak colors that exist for the current under-display front camera. This design reduces the iPhone 14 Pro's notch to a smaller cutout that will put Apple back on par with their competitors on Android, which have long abandoned Apple's big notch with small camera cutout designs for years.

It appears that Apple has been looking for a slimmer notch as a design differentiator between the more expensive iPhone 14 Pro lineup and the standard iPhone 14 model, which is said to retain the existing Face ID notch.

Other than that, it seems that Apple's under-display ambitions will only extend to the Face Face camera lineup: A late 2021 report from Kuo claims that Apple's longstanding plan to return the Touch ID sensor in the form of an under-display fingerprint scanner has proven and didn't happen until the beginning of the year. 2023.

DylanDKT also claims that Apple will release an updated iPhone SE model in 2022. This model will retain the same broad design as the current SE 2020, but add 5G technology and improved specs.

Meanwhile, the foldable iPhone is still in the prototype stage. Apple reportedly "played the long game to see how foldable phone technology develops" before committing to consumer devices. This claim is also in line with Kuo's previous report.