iPhone 14 Pro to FINALLY lose the notch claims credible Apple leaker

Even before the iPhone 13 launched, rumours were beginning to circulate about the iPhone 14. The iPhone 14 Pro, leaker Jon Prosser claimed, would finally do away with the notch and add a titanium shell making it an altogether more premium product. 

But another tipster says that rumours of the notch’s imminent death may be exaggerated. MacRumors reports on a now deleted post from @PandaIsBald on Chinese social network Weibo where the leaker claims that Apple is “unlikely” to remove the notch entirely, and is instead likely to opt for a smaller footprint. 

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Notably, the leaker in question correctly predicted the presence of the latest iPad at Apple’s recent California Streaming event, so isn’t without pedigree in the predictions game.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to square the circle of these seemingly contradictory claims, as Jon Prosser himself did on Twitter. “I believe this is true,” he wrote. “The model we showed was iPhone 14 Pro Max (which I stated in the report). I believe the regular models will still use the notch.”

We’ve got quite used to the regular and Pro iPhones looking similar to each other (number of camera lenses aside), but it wasn’t always this way for Apple. 

When the company introduced the notch with the iPhone X in 2017, it also revealed two more familiar looking handsets: the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Both retained the more traditional iPhone design seen from 2007 onwards, with the screen sandwiched between bars at the top and bottom, where a Home button sat. This was phased out the following year with the iPhone XS family of handsets, but is still retained for the budget iPhone SE.

In other words, it wouldn’t be unheard of for Apple to introduce a more premium looking ‘Pro’ handset, and it might well work in the company’s favour. With the actual quality-of-life differences between vanilla and Pro iPhones looking increasingly limited, a bold new look could be just the thing to upsell reluctant buyers in 2022.