For those who aren’t a fan of the iPhone’s notch, the bad news is that you might have to wait a while before the notch design is phased out. This is because rumors are claiming that it could stick around until 2020 at the very least. However it seems that there is a glimmer of hope that the notch design could eventually go the way of the dinosaur.A report from Reuters has revealed that Apple’s Face ID supplier, AMS, has recently taken the wraps off a brand new light and infrared proximity sensor (which is part of the TrueDepth camera system) that can operate behind the display of a phone. This means that there no longer needs to be a dedicated cutout in the screen for Face ID, thus potentially paving the way for a notch-less iPhone.
Of course there still needs to be an area for the front-facing camera, but if that can be solved then a notch-less iPhone could very well be in our future. AMS does not reference Apple and its iPhones specifically, but in a statement made by the company, “By developing this ‘behind OLED’ ambient light/proximity sensor, AMS enables smartphone manufacturers to achieve the highest possible ratio of display area to body size.”
It has been suggested that Apple could possibly make the notch smaller for the 2019 iPhones, which is also rumored to see the return of Touch ID and the use of USB-C.