Apple is famous for the sleek, minimal design of its products, but sometimes functionality has to trump minimalism. That’s been the case with the iPhone’s Face ID system, which provides a very convenient and hands-free way to unlock your phone just by looking at it, but which requires a pill-shaped cutout at the top of the screen to work.
Now, though, it’s looking like Apple may ditch the cutout but keep the Face ID unlock option by using detectors placed beneath the screen instead. This under-screen Face ID option would mean that only a small cutout would be required in one corner of the screen for the front-facing camera, so the pill cutout could be removed.
The latest info comes from Ross Young, VP at Counterpoint Research, who wrote on X about an announcement at the Society for Information Display conference this week:
“At the SID Business Conference today, OTI Lumionics CEO Michael Helander confirmed that they expect phones with under panel Face ID using their materials to be available for sale in 2026,” Young wrote. “This suggests that iPhone 18 Pro models will have under panel Face ID with other brands and models to follow…”
Rumors about the switch to under-screen Face ID have been growing in recent weeks, with previous info on the iPhone 18 Pro also suggesting that this could be the case. However, it would be a technical challenge for Apple to pull this off, as a front-facing camera can easily create a 3D map of someone’s face using infrared dots, but this is much harder to do when the infrared signals have to pass through a OLED panel with high pixel density like that used on iPhones.
Apple did secure a patent last year for the placement of cameras behind an active display, suggesting that the company has been working on this change for some time. However, due to the significant amount of redesign work this would necessitate, it won’t be seen in the upcoming iPhone 17 series which is set to be released later this year. Instead, it is most likely to be a part of the plans for the iPhone 18 series, which is expected to be released in 2026.
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