Forget the iPhone 12 5G! The iPhone 13 may have a smaller notch

Is 2021 the year Apple finally changes its notch?

Tipster Ice Universe is perhaps best known for his countless Samsung leaks, but today he has officially entered the world of Apple leaks with an interesting claim – a revised notch is in the works for the iPhone 13.

The notch in question will reportedly retain the width of Apple’s existing implementation, which means there won’t be room for extra information on either side. It will, however, blend in better by shaving off some height.

Ice Universe believes the next notch could be roughly half as deep as the current one. How Apple plans to achieve that reduction wasn’t revealed, but one possibility involves moving the in-ear speaker to the edge of the frame and shrinking down Face ID components.

The Tim Cook-led company is understood to be developing an in-screen Face ID implementation, but the tech isn’t quite ready for primetime, so a smaller notch would act as a stepping stone towards that. 

Of course, these claims are no guarantee the iPhone 13 will boast a new notch. The same was initially said to be happening with the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, but newer reports later debunked those theories.