With iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, Apple is said to remove the huge notch on the front screen and replace it with an i-shaped notch. However, for the notch to work, Apple has to remove some components of the TrueDepth camera system. Recently a patent has surfaced on the internet and it provides a reasonable explanation as to how Apple manages to shrink the notch in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
How does the “i-shaped” notch in iPhone 14 Pro series work?
As per a patent spotted by Patently Apple, Apple has created a “light folding element” that helps “reduce the footprint of components to maximise the display area and thereby decrease the size of the iPhone’s notch.” Further, the report mentions, “the use of the lighting folding element can provide more flexibility for positioning the IR light emitter with respect to the other components such as the IR detector and front-facing camera.”
Given that the light folding element is capable of charging the direction of the IR light, Apple can change the position of the IR light emitter, removing it from the notch and placing it somewhere else in the device, which in turn helps in reducing the space required by all the elements inside the notch. “In some embodiments, the light folding element may be positioned at least partially between an enclosure of the front-facing camera and a closure of the device,” the report mentions.
(Image: Patently Apple)
Apple plans to reduce production gap between India and China
This year, the Cupertino-based tech giant is looking to narrow the gap between the production of iPhones in India and China. According to a recent Bloomberg report, Apple and its suppliers could begin manufacturing the upcoming iPhone 14 in India as soon as two months from the international launch of the device. Following the September release, the first iPhone 14s manufactured in India could be ready by “last October or November”, as per the report.
In the past, it took six to nine months for Apple to start manufacturing the latest iPhone in India. However, with a decent response to iPhone 13’s production in the country, Apple is looking at India as an alternative to its largest manufacturer in the world, China, as “Xi Jinping’s administration clashes with the US government” are on the rise.
