Former Apple design chief Jony Ive famously prioritized sleek aesthetics over almost everything else, and there was widespread agreement that he sometimes took this a little too far.
However, his long-term vision of the future of the iPhone as a single slab of glass has persisted beyond his tenure, and a new post does seem to present a persuasive view of what we might expect from a 20th Anniversary iPhone next year …
The ‘single slab of glass’ phrase obviously describes the sense of what the company is trying to achieve rather than a reality. There will always be bezels of some kind, even if the display partially wraps around the sides of the device. There will always need to be cameras and speakers and microphones and sensors. While some of these may eventually be embedded beneath the display, there will always be metal as well as glass.
However, it’s long been believed that Apple would be doing its utmost to get as close as possible to this vision by the 20th anniversary iPhone in 2027.
Leaker Ice Universe has presented what I think may be the most realistic idea of what we can expect from this model in a post on X.
It is not a traditional quad curved display, nor is it anything like the curved screen solutions we have seen on Android phones over the years. The curvature itself could be extremely subtle.
What truly creates the visual impact may be a sophisticated combination of optical refraction, light guiding structures, and carefully engineered visual illusion. The end result could be a display where the bezel nearly disappears from sight, while edge viewing remains natural and undisturbed.
In other words, Apple will be doing everything it can to make the bezels look as unobtrusive as possible, but will rely significantly on creating a perception which is more impressive than the engineering reality.
The post claims that Apple may brand it as a Liquid Glass display, and includes an image representative of the anticipated look.
This seems to me to describe a realistic prospect of something that would look sufficiently impressive to justify the fuss of a 20th Anniversary iPhone branding while still being practical to manufacture using existing production techniques.
Relying on clever design to create a visual perception that goes beyond the physical design is something we’ve seen right from the very first Apple Watch. The way that the black background of the display blends into the glossy glass bezel creates the illusion of having way less bezel than it really does.
As Macworld notes, the post appears to be rather speculative but does seem to me to be plausible.
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