Emir BardakçıApple is ready with an impressive change in the front design for its imminent iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max models. The brand is reportedly ditching the pill-shaped punch hole design in favor of a single punch hole camera that sits in the top left corner along with under-display FD technology. Notably, this design has not been unseen on the smartphones market yet.
Xiaomi tried this design on its smartphones quite some time back, even before the brand made its entry on the Apple radar. Notably, the level of development on the display technology solutions first seen on Xiaomi have set the stage for the latest design on the market.
A Dramatic Display Upgrade in Apple’s Pro Lineage
As reported by market research sources dated December 16, Apple is actually conducting in-house tests of a brand new front design architecture appearing in the iPhone 18 Pro line. This means the existing design featuring a pill-shaped hole is to be swapped out for a single punch-hole camera design. Moreover, the FaceID modules are to be routed below the screen.
“The tech is said to be based on HIAA (Hole-In-Active-Area), a production technology that enables the front camera hole punch to be positioned right on top of an OLED display’s active image area. While full-screen camera technology still has image quality trade-offs, HIAA is currently viewed as a good compromise between image quality and design until full screen tech is ready in the second half of this decade,” according to Tech Radar.
Xiaomi’s Earlier Use of the Same Concept
Though Apple’s latest trend has attracted much attention, it should be noted that it has already used such upper-left corner punch-hole cameras since 2020. At that point, it was trying new front camera locations on various lines of smartphones to make punch-hole displays common on Android phones.
Some of the models incorporating this design philosophy were:
- REDMI Note 9
- REDMI 10X 4G
- Xiaomi Mi 10
- Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro
- Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
- Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite series
- Xiaomi Mi 10S
- Xiaomi Mi 11
- Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra
However, by 2021, the company had almost integrated beyond this placement and had even begun exploring the option of going underneath the display. Such evolutions contributed largely to the enhancement of OLED manufacturing, which is currently in vogue.
iPhone 18 Pro Series Hardware Requirements
Other than display upgrades, the iPhone 18 Pros are rumored to come along with the launch of the A20 Pro chipset from Apple. The microprocessor is rumored to have been fabricated on the latest 2nm node from TSMC and will come with CoWoS silicon packaging that integrates the processor cores and the unified memory and neural engine into a small space. This aligns with sector trends to enhance efficiency and performance, which Xiaomi has also worked on.
Furthermore, Apple is rumored to be evaluating new self-manufactured modem technology and a new cooling design, which may incorporate a vapor chamber made of stainless steel. There may also be camera upgrades in the form of a three-layer stacked camera sensor, which is intended to improve dynamic range and low-light capture.
Industry Perspective and Design Cycles
As a sector, Apple’s reported choice highlights an ongoing trend: design concepts are frequently iterated, honed, and proven out across a series of brands before being ready for mainstream adaptation. Xiaomi’s willingness, years ago, to lead the way on unproven front camera designs served as vital usability feedback input into the development of bezel-less smartphone design.
While advancements in display technology continue to ensure that both Xiaomi and Apple work to minimize visual obstructions to reach full screen displays, till then, technologies such as HIAA provide a noticeable step ahead with engineering credentials coupled with aesthetic requirements in this field.
