iPhone 14 Pro to have a pill-shaped notch when the display is active

Leakers have long suggested that iPhone models in 2022 might include two notches at the top of their screens: one for the camera and the other one for the FaceID system (the "hole + pill design," as consultant Ross Young called it). A new leak from MacRumors, "an anonymous tipster," suggests that the two notches will appear as a single pill-shaped notch when the iPhone screen is active. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman later corroborated the report. According to the MacRumors source, Apple intends to turn off the pixels between these two notches to create a contiguous black space.

The source also hints that the company "intends to visually expand the darkened areas around the cutouts to accommodate content." In other words, the iPhone could use this black space and resize the notch for those purposes.

9to5Mac reports that Apple plans to use the space to display the green and orange camera and microphone indicators that are currently in the status bar. Doing so could make privacy flags significantly more obvious than they are now. 9to5 says that users can tap the indicators to see a list of apps that have accessed the microphone or camera. The report also specifies that the iPhone's camera app could get some redesign, with the expandable control bar moving to the screen top part rather than coming up from the bottom.

The reports come just a week before Apple's Far Out event, where we expect all the latest iPhone models to appear. The iPhone 14 Pro model is expected to include a new chip, an autofocus selfie camera and a price increase. We also expect new Apple Watches, including an Apple Watch Series 8, and possible updates to the AirPods Pro lineup.