iPhone 13 Models Feature 20% Smaller Notch That's Just a Tiny Bit Taller

[adammusic]

Are we getting any more info in the status bar?
Actual battery percentage?

if not then who the ffff cares about a little but smaller notch

 

[iGüey]

If they're just going to remove the notch next year, why bother with shrinking it barely this year? Seems like unnecessary R&D...?

So maybe the rumor that notch is going to disappear is false.

 

[Nuno Lopes]

This iPhone developments seam to have been dedicated mostly to video … saw some interesting things there. The rest … improvements that we have seen years ago on other flagships.

I divide the iPhone history between two periods … iPhone 1-5S … and the rest.

I’m not the kind of person that buys a new iPhone every year so it ok. I’ll be upgrading from iPhone X to it will be a good leap forward for me.

PS: Tim seams to be obsessed with TV&Movies as well as Wellness .. is that the future? I mean, people moving between the gym and TV, a few games maybe … looks a lot like Tim’s retirement plan … not so much of a young man or woman. So many TV & Dental awards and little time to put a finger print reader beyond the iPad Mini. Hey the notch is thicker and less wide … great.

 

[Jaspers dog]

i don't mind the notch i just want my battery % back without keep swiping down to see everytime. hopefully this smaller notch will allow the screen real estate for the battery % to happen.

Amen. PLEASE can we have the percentage back.

 

[Crow_Servo]

The smaller notch is somehow uglier. Hoping we actually get a notch-less iPhone 14 Pro next year. Then again, I'd probably just get an SE Plus if it's offered. Not impressed by the phones lately.

 

[svenning]

I wonder if they will actually go for a under display Face ID / Touch ID next year when they have now introduced the smaller notch. I fear they might want to keep that for a year or 2 since I imagine some engineering effort has gone into reducing the size. Thoughts ?

 

[darngooddesign]

People who hate the notch: Please use under screen cameras and sensors like Android phones.

Apple: Ok, since you asked nicely we got rid of the notch; the camera and sensors are inferior but that's what you guys seem to want.

People who hate the notch: Apple sucks because they copy Android.

 

[Denzo]

Something about a hole surrounded by screen bothers me more than a little lump in the bezel. Just personal preference I guess.

Actually agree. Both the X and 12 pro have it and I’ve never seen it as an issue.
When it goes (notch), great, we get more screen space but currently it’s not even remotely bothering me due to where it is.
I think it’s funny that the Samsung fold 3 review shows the under camera display and apparently the camera performance crap, and you can see the hole from some angles anyways.. not really what I would be wanting

 

[ds2000]

Smaller notch is good. But the current size of the notch does not bother me.

This, I find it comical how wound up it makes people

 

[Zdigital2015]

Apple used to make fun of android platform fragmentation, but now iOS developers have to “support” a zillion different notches and screen specs in their apps.

A Zillion? Hardly. Auto-Layout mitigates those issues if you’re an iOS developer. Hopefully you’re not an accountant.

 

[VulchR]

Personally I hate the notch not for aesthetic reasons, but because it limits the information displayed on the status bar. On my current phone I can never see the VPN icon because of the 🤬 notch, but using a VPN is a requirement of my work and sometimes it drops the connection. Just add a little real estate above the screen and used the increased size of the phone for the battery.

 

[Somian]

that doesn’t work when you’re a game developer, though, and need to make sure that the UI is visible on every iPhone. Yeah, Game engines offer safe zones as well but they need to be configured so if you only developed based on phone A and then phone B comes out with a taller notch, some of your UI elements might be cut out by the notch until you updated your game.

 

[iPrabhu]

the notch is still whack. should be an edgeless, notch-less infinity screen with a camera hole

Sure. In the next year's model.

 

[NMBob]

iPhone 14. We've made the notch even thinner! You'll love it!

 

[darngooddesign]

Apple used to make fun of android platform fragmentation, but now iOS developers have to “support” a zillion different notches and screen specs in their apps.

When have you seen an iOS app that can touch the notch except for the color of the title bar background? There is nothing to "support" with auto-layout.

 

[darngooddesign]

the notch is still whack. should be an edgeless, notch-less infinity screen with a camera hole

I don't want four different holes for the various sensors.

 

[mrex]

the higher notch looks even worse than the wider notch.

 

[Stars&Stripes]

But when I saw that the notch hides the numbers from the battery percentage icon in the upper right corner (Status Bar) of the screen I opted out.

I thought the same thing until I got the 11 Pro Max and saw how the battery lasted all day long without charge, then I stopped caring about percentage.

 

[seek3r]

Maybe this year's trimmed notch is like the iPhone 7's unnecessary switch to an electronic home button — to eventually be phased out all together in a year or two. Hope so

The SE still has that button, it’s stuck around for a long time…

 

[indiecraig]

I'm not a fan of the notch but accepted it as a means to an end - removal of the home button with Touch ID, which boosted the screen to body ratio without moving the fingerprint reader to the back. My main issue with it has always been software - 16:9 video played back in the native player is either pillar boxed or expanded right to the edges of the display. Pillarboxing negates the larger screen and actually results in a smaller video than on the iPhone 8 Plus, and only 10% taller than on the iPhone 8. Expanding to the edges reveals the whole distracting notch in all its ugliness and cuts off quite a lot of the top and bottom of the frame. My third party video player allow me to set it to automatically expand the video right to the edge of the notch, which looks great and should be built into iOS as the default zoom mode for video playback.

Based on the above, a taller notch is worse in my opinion, regardless of how narrow they have made it. It will make no difference to the pillar boxing, will be more distracting when zoomed, and will result in a smaller video when zoomed using the third party player. When ZTE are putting out things like the Axon 30, with the second generation under screen selfie camera (huge improvement over the Fold 3) and an under screen fingerprint reader, it is starting to feel unnecessary to continue to chop bits out of the screen. I will stay with my XR for another year or 2 and see what happens. It's very unlikely I will go to an Android phone, but I find it very hard to get enthusiastic about the current crop of iPhones when I can't actually see how they would improve my user experience.

 

[darngooddesign]

My third party video player allow me to set it to automatically expand the video right to the edge of the notch, which looks great and should be built into iOS as the default zoom mode for video playback.

But unless the video is shot in as widescreen as the phone, it chops off the top and bottom of the video which is worse IMO.

 

[indiecraig]

But unless the video is shot in as widescreen as the phone, it chops off the top and bottom of the video which is worse IMO.

Yes, but only a little bit. Much better than the built in zoom mode which I refuse to use.

 

[darngooddesign]

Yes, but only a little bit. Much better than the built in zoom mode which I refuse to use.

I also have an XR and I dislike how much it crops the top and bottom. My iPadPro is better in that it only crops the left and right a little to fit the width of the screen.

 

[indiecraig]

I also have an XR and I dislike how much it crops the top and bottom. My iPadPro is better in that it only crops the left and right a little to fit the width of the screen.

With 16:9 video it really is a balance between cropping and pillar/letterboxing on any iOS/iPad OS device. The benefits of the iPad are the bigger screen (so wasting some of it doesn’t feel so bad) and the fact that cropping the sides of 16:9 video is (or used to be) expected and planned for when the video is produced due to legacy TV sets being 4:3. Cropping the top and bottom is not, so you can start losing the tops of people’s heads - I agree, it looks awful.

I know that wishing for Apple to give users more control is futile, but allowing users to choose whether they want to zoom to the notch or to the extremes would resolve a lot of my frustration with the “new” aspect ratio and the notch. At the moment I still feel I had a better 16:9 viewing experience on my 6 Plus when using the native player. Visual demonstration below of the 2 native options (notch drawn in) and what I consider the “correct” way to zoom. The cropping of the top and bottom is much less severe in image 3 than in image 2. The video player I use is nPlayer, which is a great player anyway.

Anamorphic movies (21:9) are much closer to the iPhone aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and would look absolutely stunning in either native setting if the notch could be eliminated. At the moment it’s either letterboxed and pillarboxed, or the notch destroys the symmetry (especially jarring on a light scene).

I find it surprising that Apple considers this acceptable considering their new(ish) focus on producing content. But maybe most people don’t consume traditional format videos on their phone, or just don’t care about the issues of wasted screen/cropping/letter+pillarboxing/notch/asymmetry.

 

[mi7chy]

i would argue that it’s actually a great design

it’s literally iconic — you can instantly tell the iPhone apart from all the other hole punch / edge-to-edge phones

Not really. Google Pixel 3XL was first with the fugly narrow notch. iPhone 13 is second.