Apple‘s been rumoured to do something big this year for the iPhone because it’s celebrating its 10th anniversary. What could they be doing, you might ask? Well, based on the latest leak from the Redditors in r/iPhone, it looks like it’s going to be a really futuristic-looking iPhone with an edge-to-edge display and a vertical dual-camera module.
What we have here is a leaked image of what Redditor u/kamikasky alleges is the front and back panel of the upcoming iPhone 8. According to him, his “friend in the industry” sent him those and that these are the same panels Apple’s Chinese manufacturers got last week.
Based on the photo, it looks like the upcoming iPhone 8 will feature an edge-to-edge top-to-bottom display (rumoured to be OLED, supplied by Samsung) in front, which lines up with several earlier rumours. What you don’t see is a cutout for a Touch ID fingerprint scanner, suggesting the fact that Apple might have it embedded under the glass instead.
The back panel is also supposed to be glass and features a vertical dual-camera module. What’s also interesting is that the module pops right out and shows two camera cutouts as well as a hole in the middle for what looks like the smartphone’s flash.
But that’s not all. The leak also contains a second image which has the “iPhone 8” next to this year’s upcoming iPhone 7s and 7s Plus — both of which will also feature glass backs and wireless charging. Besides that, the 7s and 7s Plus looks broadly similar to last year’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
The reason this leak seems so legit is because the design of the iPhone 8 was somewhat confirmed by the infamous Foxconn insiders that held an AMA on Reddit 24 hours before Apple’s WWDC.
Someone asked them which of the three iPhones in these pictures (Picture 1, Picture 2) was the closest to the iPhone 8, and their answer was the “middle one. More glass but close“. They also said that the new iPhone 8 will feature Facial Detection and a Retina scanner embedded in the front-facing camera modules.
Then again, it is worth noting that they did get some stuff wrong like how they said the new MacBook Pros would get 32GB of RAM, and it didn’t. However, they do note that they don’t have exposure on the entire supply chain, but the designs that get sent to Foxconn are usually matured designs and they “don’t change that radically”.
Whether you believe it or not, there one thing about this new design that should give you enough reason to take this with a grain of salt. Much like the Essential Phone, this iPhone design has a small (OK, admittedly the iPhone’s is a lot larger) cut out in the screen to fit the camera module and earpiece. However, unlike the Essential Phone, which can have that cut out because Android doesn’t really make full use of that space, Apple’s own iOS does. Even on iOS 11, the clock is still smack dab in the middle.
So, if the camera module eats into the screen, what happens to the clock?
What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below. Would you like your next iPhone to look like this?
