Hours after a new rumor backed up claims the iPhone 18 Pro's Dynamic Island would be small and moved to the left, an exasperated leaker says no.
The latest rumor about a reduced and moved Dynamic Island has cropped up before, but now leaker Instant Digital on Chinese site Weibo is wondering just which translation app people are using.
"The front camera on the left side of the iPhone 18 Pro is a complete misinformation," writes Instant Digital (in Safari translation.) "I suspect that the English author made a translation error."
"I and the Chinese and Korean media said that the iPhone 18 Pro would place the infrared sensor under the screen on the left side," continued the leaker.
So that's the Face ID sensor rather than the front-facing camera that could be moved to the left. "There is no way," said Instant Digital, finally.
To back this up, the leaker also posted an image of what purports to be a Face ID sensor module, next to a crude pen sketch of its position in the iPhone.
The purported Face ID module together with a pen sketch of its position in the iPhone 18 Pro — image credit: Instant Digital
Face ID requires projecting infrared light onto a user's face, then reading that projection with a camera. If this leaked image of a Face ID module is correct, it looks as if only the infrared flood illuminator may be positioned to the left.
Under-display technology
There have long been rumors about an iPhone with no Dynamic Island and with all cameras and sensors under the display. The rumors began when the notch first appeared on the iPhone X in 2017.
It wasn't until 2022 that anything changed with the notch, despite some Android phones having pinhole-like cutouts instead of a wide section at the top of the screen. Then Apple introduced the Dynamic Island, which made a virtue out of the necessity to have a cutout at all.
The Dynamic Island appears to shrink and grow the black cutout region, and it displays details such as Live Activities in there. But it is still only there because there couldn't be a completely hidden camera and Face ID sensor.
There still can't be, but that doesn't stop the rumors of a cutout being removed, at least reduced. A recent report claimed that Apple was now looking to achieve under-display systems by 2027, perhaps for the 20th anniversary iPhone.
