One of the biggest redesigns in the iPhone's history was revealed five years ago. The notch to the iPhone with Face ID is one of the innovations introduced by the iPhone X.
In memory of the notch turning five years old this week, we thought we'd look back at the history of the display bezels and how they have evolved into the pill shaped cutout it is today.
The top, bottom, and sides of the display were thick for the first ten years of the iPhone's existence. Black or white were the colors of the device's bezel. The Home Button, earpiece, and front-facing camera needed to be located at the top and bottom of the device.
The first few generations of the iPhone had a 3.5 inch display and Apple kept the thick "forehead and chin" bezels. Things began to change in 2017.
Tim Cook used Apple's famous "One more thing" phrase to announce the most significant redesign in the iPhone's history. Face ID is housed in a new notch that protrudes into the top edge of the display and is one of the new features of the iPhone X.
Apple had to rethink how it handles content after the change to the display on the iPhone. The new design made it necessary for third-party apps to be updated to support the notch and be sized right for the new display. The notch was a key part of the design of the iPhone for four years.
Apple was able to reduce its width with the iPhone 13 because the notch remained essentially unchanged. The width and height of the notch on the iPhone 13 was changed. It was a subtle change, but it emphasized Apple's efforts to minimize and ideally remove the notch, which would happen a year later.
Five years after the notch's debut, Apple is finally moving on, upgrading the notch on the latest iPhones to a pill-shaped cutout separated from the display. The cutout may look like a pill-shaped display intrusion, but it is actually two separate cutouts merged and hidden within the user interface through a feature called Dynamic Island.
Some called Dynamic Island the best design work from Apple in years after it was unveiled last week.
The question is what comes after the Dynamic Island after the pill-shape and hole-punch cutout on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. While the end goal may be a fully unintrusive design with no notch or cutouts, that may be far out in the future until the technology to adequately hide the various cameras and sensors beneath the display is available.
As the feature trickles down from the highest-end models, it seems likely that Apple's notch replacement is here to stay for a long time. What changes do you want to see on the iPhone? We can let you know in the comments.
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