Bloomberg: iPhone 13's smaller notch isn't small enough for Apple, will shrink further next year

Iphone 12 Notch
Iphone 12 Notch (Image credit: EverythingApplePro)

What you need to know

  • Apple will reportedly shrink the notch in the upcoming iPhone 13.
  • Mark Gurman believes Apple will shrink the notch yet further with iPhone 14 next year.

Apple is roundly expected to shrink the notch when the iPhone 13 lineup is announced this fall, but that won't be enough according to a new report. Apple wants to make the not smaller still, eventually doing away with it completely.

According to a new Bloomberg report by Debby Wu, Apple isn't content with making the notch smaller this year and will strive to make it even smaller when it announces the iPhone 14 lineup in 2022. But that isn't even the end goal, with Apple keen to remove the need for a notch at some point in the future — presumably placing all Face ID technology beneath the display in the process.

While the design of the new Apple phones will remain largely unchanged, the company plans to reduce the size of the front-facing camera and face unlock sensor cutout, or notch, to better match its rivals. The company hopes to eventually remove the notch entirely in a future version of the iPhone and is likely to shrink its size further next year.

Apple is also rumored to be planning the return of Touch ID, although the report says we shouldn't expect that to happen this year — at least not in the form of an in-display fingerprint scanner. I'm still hopeful for an iPad Air-like solution that puts the scanner on the side button.

We still have a couple of months to wait before Apple shows us what it has in store with iPhone 13. If you can't wait, the iPhone 12 is still the best iPhone for most people.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.