New iPhone 14 design leak might make you regret wishing there was no notch

Recently T3 reported on a mock-up of the latest iPhone 14 design rumour floating about – that instead of a notch the iPhone 14 will get a pill-shaped cutout instead.

The plot, however, has just thickened.

That's because another report now suggests that there will be more than one hole at the top of the iPhone 14. According to display supply chain expert Ross Young, "We now believe Apple will have a hole + pill design on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. The smaller hole will not be invisible...The two hole concept will be unique to Apple, like the notch, not similar to all the pill models from Huawei."

Young's tweet shows a central, pill-shaped cut-out with a second, circular one to the left of it. It doesn't look quite right to me but even when others have come up with their own, more symmetrical mock-ups there's something jarring about it: to my eyes it's more distracting than the smaller notch in the iPhone 13.

You can run but you can't hide (your camera bits)

Some commenters have suggested that the ungainly design is okay because it'll be behind the screen, but that version of Face ID isn't expected in the 2022 iPhone lineup; these cutouts, if they're actually going to be there, will be very visible – much more so than the cutout in the Samsung Galaxy S21 and Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

They remind me of the iPhone 4, but the difference here is that the cutouts there weren't part of the actual display because we weren't scared of bezels like we are in smartphones today. 

As much as I dislike the notch, I'm not sure this is an improvement – so I'm hoping this is one iPhone 14 rumour that turns out to be based on a design idea Apple has since abandoned.