iPhone 14 Pro could have a distractingly big camera cut-out

We’ve been hearing for a while that the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max might have a punch-hole selfie camera rather than a notch, but the latest leak suggests that rather than just a small circular cut-out in the screen, this will be pill-shaped.

That’s according to leaker @dylandkt on Twitter, who’s been right about Apple information in the past, and while they don’t talk about the size, being pill-shaped suggests it will be rather bigger than a typical punch-hole camera.

We’ve seen pill-shaped cut-outs before, such as on the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, and they’re typically around twice the size of circular ones (because they usually house two lenses). In the case of the iPhone 14 Pro, there’s no suggestion that it will be getting a dual-lens selfie camera, so presumably the extra space will be to house some of the Face ID components.

Hopefully not too many of them, or that could make the camera cut-out distractingly large, but there’s hope there, as the same source claims that the Face ID hardware will be placed under the display, and that the functionality of the sensors hasn’t been negatively affected by this change.

So if this is all accurate then at the very least the camera cut-out should be significantly smaller than the current notch, but perhaps not quite as small as we’d hoped – or as most of the competition.

It’s worth noting also that this change is only expected for the Pro models, with the standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max reportedly still having a notch.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 has an under-display camera (Image credit: Aakash Jhaveri)

Analysis: a step in the right direction

This news is a little less promising than some of the iPhone 14 Pro leaks we’ve heard, but it would still make for a big step in the right direction.

It would mean the removal of the notch – even if its replacement is still quite large – and we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple worked to decrease the size of the camera cut-out in future generations, by placing ever more components under the screen.

So perhaps the iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 ranges would have a more conventional punch-hole, and eventually maybe we’d see a move to under-display cameras, like you get on a handful of Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.

That tech hasn’t been perfected yet, which is probably at least part of why no iPhone has this, but we’d imagine this is the goal for most manufacturers – Apple included.

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Via PocketLint