Main points
- The iPhone 20, which will be released in 2028, will have a unique design with rounded edges and a seamless glass construction without buttons or cutouts.
- Apple is working on a camera hidden under the screen, but the quality of the images remains unsatisfactory at the moment.
Apple's glass revolution: what will the iPhone 20 design be like / Collage by Channel 24/Unsplash/Geeky Gadgets
Apple's 20th anniversary smartphone update promises to be the most significant design overhaul in the product's history. According to insiders, the device, which is being referred to as the iPhone 20 or iPhone XX, will feature a unique glass design with rounded edges. The gadget will look like a seamless slab of glass without buttons or cutouts.
What technological innovations and design solutions will the iPhone 20 feature?
One of the main features of the new product should be a display with curves on all four sides. This “waterfall” design, which has long been chewed over and discarded by Android smartphone manufacturers because no one liked it, will be complemented by extremely thin frames around the screen, the width of which will be only 1.1 millimeters, writes MacRumors.
For comparison, the current iPhone 17 Pro model has a bezel of approximately 1.44 millimeters. The glass panel is expected to flow into a polished frame, visually reminiscent of the design used in the iPhone X.
Achieving this body design requires Apple to solve complex technical challenges, including hiding the front-facing camera and Face ID sensors beneath the surface of the screen. The company is reportedly testing Samsung's UPC technology, which places the camera behind the display's pixel structure.
Things are going badly so far.
Currently, the quality of images with this approach is still not high enough. Android smartphone manufacturers began experimenting with under-screen cameras in late 2020, but the images users received were so terrible that the technology was quickly abandoned. In addition, the front camera itself was still visible under the pixels under certain conditions, for example, when viewed from a specific angle.
All of this calls into question the possibility of completely abandoning the cutouts in the near future. If engineers fail to improve the camera hidden under the screen, Apple could use a fallback option – an even more compact Dynamic Island or a small dot cutout combined with Samsung's new Polar ID authentication system.
Be that as it may, there is still a lot of time before the release of the iPhone 20, which Apple will certainly use to good effect. The iPhone 18 will be released in 2026, the iPhone 19 in 2027, and only in September 2028 should we wait for the anniversary release.
There is another theory.
Interestingly, some sources, such as Wccftech, suggest that such a smartphone could be released as early as 2027, that is, in the iPhone 19 generation. This means that Apple has even less time to improve the technology.
Despite the ambitious plans, some users have already expressed concerns about the practicality of curved screens, pointing to possible inconvenience when typing or less durability of the device in the event of a drop. However, for many fans of the brand, such a move will be a long-awaited return to the aesthetic of rounded shapes that once distinguished the first generations of iPhones.