Apple will be absolutely delighted. In a week when iPhone 13 speculation should be reaching fever pitch with the launch date reveal, prolific leaker Jon Prosser has decided to crash the party by publishing renders of what the iPhone 14 will apparently look like.
And while the iPhone 13 looks set to be an iterative improvement, the iPhone 14 looks like a far bigger stride. I mean, it’s still a black rectangle, but as improvements to black rectangles go, it’s about as good as they get.
Prosser, for those not aware, has a very good track record when it comes to Apple leaks, scoring an impressive 74.3% accuracy rating according to AppleTrack. Perhaps more importantly, he once shaved his eyebrows in penance of getting a prediction wrong which is… dedicated, to say the least.
The renders, created by Prosser’s long-term collaborator Ian Zelbo, show some big design changes to expect, including the elimination of the much-ridiculed notch that has cropped the top of the screen off since 2017’s iPhone X.
While Android devices have managed to eliminate this earlier, for Apple it’s quite a bit trickier, because that’s where all the clever Face ID facial recognition hardware lives. In any case, it’s gone, replaced by a small pinhole camera. Welcome to 2019, Apple.
The phone is also quite a lot thicker, meaning that the camera bump is pretty much eliminated as the lenses sit inside the frame, rather than jutting out. Frankly, this is long overdue: the move towards thinner and thinner devices was a bit silly when it inevitably meant a compromise on battery life. If Apple ups the battery capacity and hides the camera, then it’s win-win in my book.
There’s also reportedly a titanium frame, though Prosser is keen to note this is a render of an iPhone 14 Pro Max, so that particular detail may not be part of the regular pauper’s iPhone.
There’s no information about what you can expect on the inside, and the remaining details are so mundane that only a real Apple obsessive could even slightly care. But for completeness’ sake, here they are: a return to round volume buttons last seen on the iPhone 5; redesigned speaker and microphone grilles; and a Lightning connector, rather than USB-C. There, told you they were dull.
Still, it all looks pretty promising. Though personally if I were Apple, I’d send the design back to the drawing board, just to mess with a well established leaker. Maybe he’d shave his whole head this time?
See also: iPhone 14 release date
