iPhone 8: Are you Team 🤘 or Team ✊️?

Yeah, fun title — stay with me. iPhone 8 is increasingly expected to have a cutout at the top of the edge-to-edge display where the camera and sensors will be located. That's led to speculation that Apple will either embrace the "horns", and let the screen be as expansive as it possibly can, or try to hide it by color-matching the status bar.

I had a little fun with that on Twitter yesterday:

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Personally, I don't mind either. I'm claustrophobic enough that I'd like the display to run as far and wide as possible. I'm also design-centric enough that I'd love to have clean lines.

There's also a third option, of course: neither.

Many of the mockups to date use the leaked design with the current interface which is very white and bright. When Apple went to OLED on the Watch, they also went with a black interface. OLED doesn't have back lighting, so black interfaces are more energy efficient with those types of displays.

So, it's possible Apple might do the same with an OLED display on an iPhone — introduce the long-awaited dark mode.

What I'd love to see is a ThemeKit framework where developers could provide assets for both light and dark modes, so interfaces would look great either way. Eventually, it could support more options as well, given iOS at least the rudiments of customization.

We'll know one way or another in about a month, when Apple holds its traditional September Event, and iPhone 8 gets shown off on stage for the first time.

Meanwhile, let me know: Are you Team 🤘 or Team ✊️?

Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.