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iPhone 17 Pro No Longer Expected to Feature Under-Display Face ID [Updated]
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Tim Cook’s Apple ladies and gentlemen. Why invest in any truly innovative change while still raking in massive profits. Low risk, high reward for Apple.
The worst thing about Apple these days is these stupid names for mundane things found on every other phone ("Pro Motion display" or thankfully on no other phone ("Dynamic Island").
Update: Young has since said under-display Face ID is no longer expected for the iPhone 17 Pro. His previous response was sent in error.
Original story follows.
While the iPhone 16 series just began arriving to customers today, there are already rumors about the next-generation iPhone 17 series.
In a post shared on social media platform X on Thursday, display industry analyst Ross Young said he believes that next year's iPhone 17 Pro will feature under-display Face ID. This change would presumably extend to the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Under-display Face ID has been rumored for several years, but it has failed to materialize. However, Young has a good track record with display-related information about future Apple products, including being the first source to reveal that the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max would feature larger 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays, respectively. If he says the iPhone 17 Pro will have under-screen Face ID, there is a good chance it will.
In April 2023, Young shared a roadmap that showed both iPhone 17 Pro models would feature under-display Face ID, but he said the devices would still have a hole in the screen for the front camera. He does not expect both under-display Face ID and an under-display front camera until the iPhone 19 Pro models in three years from now.
With under-display Face ID, the iPhone 17 Pro models could have only a single hole at the top of the display, similar to recent Android smartphones from Samsung and Google. However, no specific design changes have been rumored yet.
Another unanswered question: Will the Dynamic Island live on with under-display Face ID?
With the iPhone 17 series still a year away, there is plenty of time remaining for additional rumors, which should give us a better idea of what to expect.
Article Link: iPhone 17 Pro No Longer Expected to Feature Under-Display Face ID [Updated]
More people complain that Apple doesn't introduce several significantly new features in iPhones every single year. Introducing several significantly new things every two years seems like a reasonable pace. Also take into account that everyone has their own definition of what constitutes a significantly new or improved feature--for instance, the new Camera Control button/slider introduced with the iPhone 16 is something I'm looking forward to, as long as it works right, but a lot of people say they have no use for it.
From what I've read, Apple has been working pretty hard, for some time, to perfect an under-display Face ID camera that meets their specs for image clarity and face recognition, but for one reason or another they haven't reached that goal yet, and/or there are other reasons it wasn't introduced with the iPhone 16 and now won't be included in the iPhone 17 either.
I agree with your assessment on under-screen FaceID.
As to the new camera button, I think perhaps it's less a matter of people actually not having a use for it, and more a matter of their simply not having adapted muscle memory to use it, yet. Personally, I played with it just a bit when I first got my 16PM -- but the reality is, I just don't take photos very often. So, when the first legitimate opportunity to use that button arrived, I reflexively used the onscreen buttons... because that's what my muscle memory has been trained to do. I realized it after the fact, of course, and I even made a point of intentionally using the button the next time I needed to take a few photos... but I imagine it'll be awhile before I do that without conscious effort.
But does that really qualify as "not having a use for it"? Or is that more a matter of not having fully realized the advantages of it, yet?
We always develop habits and ways of doing things and it can be hard to change those. Give it time and keep trying the camera control. You might find your habits changing. Or not; you’ll manage either way.
Why not make Touch ID a button, such as iPads have already had for years? Steve Jobs criticized Tim Cook for not being a products person, and the fact that a much-loved feature like Touch ID is gone from the iPhone speaks volumes about Cook's cluelessness. As for the Cook apologists who say Face ID is better than Touch ID and that's the reason why there's no Touch ID, that logic is pure Cook-style mediocrity. Apple is fully capable of implementing both Face ID and Touch ID on an iPhone, which would give users a choice between the two.