When will we see a new iPhone with a completely unobstructed display? According to the prediction of famous Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, 2024. At that point, Kuo said, Apple would likely be happy to move both its front-facing camera and Face ID under the screen on its high-end devices, which would make the iPhone 16 Pro the preferred candidate for such an upgrade.
Guo made this prediction in an article a pair of tweets, linking back to comments he made last month, saying that Apple is unlikely to release any new iPhones with an in-display fingerprint reader in the next two years. (Guo had previously predicted that this could happen sometime as early as 2023.) The reason? Well, Kuo’s framing is that the demand for the return of Touch ID is mostly a response to the rise of mask wearing. But since Apple made Face ID work better with masks earlier this year, complaints about its usefulness have mostly disappeared.
I think the true full-screen iPhone will come out in 2024. High-end iPhones in 2024 will feature under-screen front-facing cameras and under-screen Face ID. Low-light conditions are not good for front-facing camera quality, and ISP and algorithms are critical for quality improvement. https://t.co/vWjeZYZUPK
— Ming-Chi Kuo (@mingchikuo) April 20, 2022
I think it makes sense. My own experience with Face ID with a mask has been very good. Not surprising, but nice, it means I can live without the under-display Touch ID. The more interesting question, though, is how Apple would make an under-display front-facing camera. (And not just the hole-punch camera predicted for this year’s iPhone 14.)
As my colleague Sam Byford pointed out in his November 2021 review of the under-screen camera, the technology is improving, but it’s still a ways off to match the quality of unobstructed footage.
“The photos you get are definitely usable most of the time. If you’re not a selfie person, or if you don’t use your phone for Zoom calls, I think you can get away with it,” Byford said of ZTE and Xiaomi’s Writes when the camera is off the screen. “The video quality is also poor, because it may be too much to ask these phones to process in real time.”
Kuo himself suggested that the solution would be an improvement of the ISP (image signal processor) and image algorithms. It’s been clear for years that the image quality of phones is increasingly reliant on digital processing, and Apple keeps improving its cameras year after year.
Kuo also predicts that this year’s iPhone 14 will feature an upgraded front-facing camera with autofocus and a larger aperture. However, it’s unclear what Apple will do with the hardware required for this model’s Face ID. Some suggested it would be housed in a pill-shaped cutout until Apple was ready to move it under the display.
