Ever since the release of the iPhone X, Apple fans have complained about the screen ‘notch’—the black strip that sits at the top of every iPhone touchscreen, housing the selfie camera and light sensors.
A new leaked image posted on the Chinese social media site Weibo supports previous rumours that Apple plans to introduce a new ‘hole + pill’ design for future iPhone.
Pictures show the notch gone, and instead two ‘cutouts’ shaped like a sideways letter ‘i’. The leak has been independently verified by several different Apple analysts.
It appears that Apple is taking the components currently hidden by the notch and reducing any waste areas around them, leaving these visible.
(Image: PIC: Weibu)
It is unclear why Apple isn’t following in the footsteps of Android manufacturers like Samsung by simply leaving a ‘punch hole’ for the selfie camera, or hiding it altogether behind the screen.
This is perhaps because Apple prefers higher-resolution camera sensors over aesthetics, but it still amounts to lost screen space.
iPhone fans have taken to Twitter to complain about the design change which they say is worse than the ‘notch’ it replaces.
“Dear god what’s this monstrosity” wrote Twitter user Neil Sargeant.
“This is as bad as the notch either way it will make full screen content look cr*p,” said another.
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
In other iPhone news, iOS 15.4 will add an extra US voice that is neither male nor female sounding. Called ‘Quinn’ internally, Apple said that the voice was recorded by a “member of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The addition follows a change to the iPhone which forced users to select the gender of their Siri voice assistant. Before that, Siri defaulted to female automatically in the US.
The new voice, ‘number 5’, sits alongside the four male and female Siri voice options.
