iPhone 13 Isn't It: You Won't Wait For A Full Screen
The new 2021 iPhone might be called iPhone 13, but it won't have a full body display like you'll see in this feature. The imagery here comes from a video – also appearing below – from a concept creator. This imagery shows what very well might be sort of similar to the eventual full-coverage touchscreen machine that is the dream iPhone of the future. But for now, here in 2021, we're still going to get a notch, and that's OK!
The iPhone 13 Concept you see above and below is lovely – simple, sleek, and pretty on-point with Apple's design language for a smartphone in 2021. The Apple wouldn't put four equally sized camera lenses in a grid with an LED flash in the middle and a sensor below, also in the middle of the grid. That doesn't have the smooth industrial design craft necessary for a highest-end phone – but still, this could be pretty close to what Apple eventually releases.
Here in the year 2021, Apple won't release an iPhone without a notch. The iPhone 13, in all of its iterations, (if it is, indeed, called iPhone 13), will have a notch with front-facing cameras and sensors. It'd be too far a leak to go from several years of an ever-slighter notch on the front of the phone directly to a full-front display with no notch whatsoever.
Given the advances made in under-display sensors and under-display cameras in the last couple of years, it's not inconceivable that Apple would adopt such tech in a future generation iPhone. But ALSO given the less-than-perfect results smartphones have had with said sorts of under-display tech, it's not quite time for Apple to get onboard. Not yet, anyway.
Not long ago it felt impossible that Apple would remove all non-display elements from the front of the iPhone. It felt like the notch was Apple's replacement for the home button, like it wasn't an iPhone unless it had a façade that was significantly different from that of the rest of the smartphone universe.
But here in the year 2021, where Apple's iPad has no home button and the company continues to thrive in essentially every arena, it might not be so big a deal. The iPhone might just be so deeply embedded in our consciousness that it does not matter what the device looks like, even with its back completely covered by a protective case.
What do you think? Do you believe the success of the iPhone depends on the always-apparent unique nature of the hardware? Or is the iPhone so established in our society that people no longer need that reminder that the device is out there, in the hands of millions of users at any given time?