Update: Well-connected Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman has since corroborated this rumor, saying the cutouts on the iPhone 14 Pro will look like "one wide pill."
It's been almost 12 months since rumors first suggested that Apple's upcoming iPhone 14 Pro models will feature both hole-punch and pill-shaped cutouts near the top of the display. While this design detail has since been corroborated by respected analysts, what has remained less clear is how Apple's software will accommodate the cutouts when the iPhone display is active. Today, we may well have been given another piece of the puzzle.
According to information provided to MacRumors by an anonymous tipster, the discrete pill and hole cutouts are not visually separated when the display is powered on, but in fact appear as one contiguous, longer pill shape.
Rather than stick with the uneven aesthetic, the suggestion is that Apple has chosen to turn off the pixels in the "dead space" between the cutouts in order to create the appearance of a unified pill shape that is less distracting when viewing content on the screen.
In another intriguing twist, the tipster also claims that Apple intends to visually expand the blacked-out areas around the cutouts to host content. For example, Apple could make the area slightly wider to fit status icons on the left and right sides, or even extend it downward into a large rounded square when delivering certain notifications.
MacRumors has discovered chatter across Chinese social media networks, purportedly originating from Foxconn employees involved in iPhone 14 Pro assembly, suggesting the same unified pill software implementation. Like the original tipster, these sources have not been verified and we are only presenting the information up front to our readers with the usual caveats as a topic for discussion.
We'll know for sure whether this last-minute rumor turns out to be true next Wednesday, September 7, when Apple holds its "Far Out" media event, where it will unveil the new iPhone 14 series. We are expecting a 6.1-inch iPhone 14, a 6.7-inch iPhone Max, a 6.1-inch iPhone 14 Pro, and a 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Pro Max. There will be no 5.4-inch iPhone "mini" this year, with Apple instead opting for larger devices.
