Jonas Daehnert, better known by his online moniker “Phone Designer” usually has a reputation of being eerily spot-on when it comes to predicting phone designs before their launch… or rather, visualizing them based on personal gut-feelings and outsider rumors. Here’s what Daehnert believes the iPhone 12 Pro will look like, a thin notched design, with a flat edge around the sides, like the iPhones 4 and 5, and an incredibly slim bezel. Apple’s never been one to chase curved or ‘waterfall’ displays like Samsung and other Android makers, so that flat edge does make a fair bit of sense… after all, it’s also in keeping with the iPad Pro’s design language.
It may come as a slight disappointment to some that Apple hasn’t done away with the notch, considering they first featured it 3 years ago, in 2017. Companies like Samsung and OnePlus have even managed to move onto hole-punch cameras and retracting front-face cameras, so that notch does seem slightly antiquated, besides facial-recognition at a time when literally everyone is wearing masks outdoors feels counter-productive. Maybe Apple could put an in-screen fingerprint reader if they wanted to. It’s something we’ll have to wait to know more about.
The iPhone 12 Pro’s design retains yet another moderately visually jarring feature with the camera bump. If you can look past it, the hardware looks quite promising. The 12 Pro sports 3 camera lenses, like its predecessor, and a time-of-flight sensor (like the 2020 iPad Pro) that should help the new iPhone scan objects and environments better for more crisp computational photography, and for Apple’s ARKit. The glass back for wireless charging purposes is a no-brainer, especially considering Apple’s apparently working on the AirPower charging mat again, but what really has my heart is that beautifully minimal Apple logo that just about makes itself visible on the back.
Details at this point of time seem scant, but what this concept does suggest is that Apple isn’t planning on giving up on the Lightning connector anytime soon. Also, could this be the first iPhone with support for 5G??
Designer: Jonas Daehnert (Phone Designer)
