The iPhone 18 Pro could see a major design change

By Patrick Hearn Published May 5, 2025

A person holding the Apple iPhone 16e showing the screen. — Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

If the iPhone 18 release schedule wasn’t enough of a shift, it looks like the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models could switch to under-screen Face ID and have only a small camera in the top-left corner of the screen. The news comes from Digital Chat Station on Weibo, a leaker with an inside hook into Apple’s supply chain.

“Well, I checked with the Apple supply chain a few days ago. The iPhone 18/18 Pro Max is indeed testing 3D faces under the screen, with a single HIAA hole; the iPhone 8/18 Air is a regular 2+1 hole,” they write (as translated by Google.)

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While unconfirmed, the shift would be surprising. Apple heavily markets the pixel density of its displays, and that same density will make it more difficult for an under-screen Face ID function to work. Face ID projects thousands of infrared dots on a surface to create a detailed, topographical map of the user’s face. A front-facing camera can do this rather easily, but OLED panels like the kind used in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max block and scatter the light.

Apple will need to find a solution that allows the infrared light to pass through or between the OLED panels without affecting the display quality. That’s likely why the change is planned for the iPhone 18 series instead of the iPhone 17; whatever the solution is, whether a change to internal hardware or some form of software compensation, will require extensive testing and tweaking before it’s ready for public release.

The standard iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e are expected to use the same method that current models do, with front-facing sensors embedded within the Dynamic Island. These models aren’t planned for release until spring of 2027, six months after the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, as part of a new launch schedule.

The iPhone 18 will mark the 20th anniversary of the original iPhone, and it sounds like Apple plans to shake things up a bit. The rumored foldable iPhone is also expected around the same time as the iPhone 18, and if those predictions are correct, they might account for why the release schedule is changing.

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