Apple has been trying to build one specific phone since 2007, and it still hasn’t shipped it. Not a faster one, not a thinner one, one particular phone. The one that looks like a single piece of glass with a picture living inside it. Jony Ive talked about it for years before he left, calling it “a single slab of glass,” and the whole time Apple has quietly kept engineering toward that exact thing.
The 20th anniversary model, due in autumn 2027, is where all of that groundwork is supposed to finally add up. And a fresh leak this week has filled in one more piece of the puzzle: the back is going glass again.
The Glasswing Project
Let’s set the scene, because the naming and the rumours have got messy.
Internally, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the anniversary redesign is codenamed “Glasswing.” It’s named after the glasswing butterfly, the one with transparent wings, and that tells you exactly what Apple is going for. Glass edges that curve seamlessly into the display on all four sides, so the frame effectively disappears.
This is not a random side project. Gurman has reported that Glasswing was designed from the start to pair with Liquid Glass, the software look Apple shipped in iOS 26. That is the tell. When Apple redesigns the interface a year or two before the hardware lands, it’s usually softening you up for what’s coming. Liquid Glass was the trailer. Glasswing is the film.
The Design in Brief
Strip out the hype and here is the short version of what multiple leakers and analysts are lining up behind. If you want the long version, we have taken each element apart in our full breakdown of what the iPhone 20 is expected to look like, including how much evidence sits behind each claim and which parts are most likely to slip. This piece is about how Apple got here and what the glass back tells us.
A quad-curved display. Apple is reportedly working with Samsung Display on a four-sided micro-curved panel, so the screen bends away gently on every edge to sell the no-bezel illusion. Digital Chat Station describes this as a measured curve rather than a dramatic Android-style waterfall, which is the sensible call, and there are good reasons Apple would avoid the aggressive version.
COE OLED with no polariser. The panel is expected to use Samsung’s Color Filter on Encapsulation tech, which drops the traditional polariser layer. In plain terms, that means a thinner, brighter, more power-efficient screen. It’s the kind of unglamorous engineering that makes the flashy stuff possible.
Under-display Face ID. This is the goal rather than a safe bet. Apple wants the Face ID module, the selfie camera and ideally the earpiece all hidden beneath the panel, so there is nothing interrupting the front of the phone. No notch, no Dynamic Island, no cutout. Whether the technology is ready in time for 2027 is a separate question, and the honest answer is probably not. More on that below.
Solid-state buttons. Some reports suggest Apple ditches the physical volume and power buttons entirely, swapping them for solid-state controls with haptic feedback. Fewer moving parts, better water and dust sealing, and nothing to break the clean glass lines. Apple has come close to shipping this before and pulled it late, which is worth remembering.
And Now, The Glass Back
Here’s the new bit. Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital reckons Apple is bringing back a full glass rear panel, ditching the aluminium used on recent models. The claimed manufacturing quality is on par with the first-generation iPhone Air, and the production lines are apparently already being prepped.
Makes sense when you think about it. You cannot build a “single slab of glass” and then bolt a metal plate to the back of it. If the front curves into glass edges, the back needs to be glass too, or the whole illusion falls apart in your hand. This is Apple committing to the concept properly rather than faking it.
The Naming is a Genuine Mess
Quick heads up, because this trips everyone up.
Nobody actually knows what this thing will be called. Some reports say it’s not a standalone anniversary model at all, and that the design simply lands on the 2027 iPhone Pro and Pro Max. Others think Apple skips “iPhone 19” entirely and jumps straight to “iPhone 20” to mark two decades, exactly like it pulled the iPhone X trick for the tenth anniversary in 2017. A few people are already calling it the iPhone XX. Treat every name you see as a placeholder for now.
The Reality Check Nobody Wants to Hear
Right, expectation management time.
The most exciting version of this rumour, a totally uninterrupted, cutout-free, all-screen front, might not actually happen in 2027. Display analyst Ross Young and tipster Ice Universe have both suggested Apple may still need more time, which could leave a smaller cutout in place for the anniversary cycle rather than nothing at all.
That would be classic Apple. The company would rather delay a feature than ship it half-baked, and hiding a working camera and Face ID array under a display without wrecking image quality is genuinely hard. Ice Universe describes Apple’s approach as leaning on optical refraction and clever visual illusions to make the bezel look invisible, which is a very different thing from actually eliminating it. So keep one eyebrow raised. The 2027 phone will be a real design break either way, but the true finish line might arrive a cycle or two later.
We’ve Been Here Before
None of this is new territory for Apple, and that’s the reassuring part.
The iPhone 4 introduced the glass-front-and-back sandwich back in 2010. Apple then dumped it for aluminium with the iPhone 5, chasing something lighter and harder to shatter, before returning to glass backs with the iPhone 8 in 2017 to enable wireless charging. Glass, metal, glass. Apple has run this loop before.
There’s also form. Apple loves marking milestones with a product that breaks the usual pattern. The 20th Anniversary Macintosh in 1997 was a slim, premium, slightly bonkers all-in-one that looked years ahead of its time. This is the iPhone equivalent, and the company clearly wants it to land as a statement piece rather than another routine yearly bump.
The Trade-off Worth Arguing About
So here’s the question, and it’s a real one, not a rhetorical one.
Glass looks stunning. It also cracks. Anyone who has ever shattered an iPhone back knows exactly what this compromise feels like, and a phone that is glass on the front, glass on all four curved edges and glass on the back is, mathematically, more surface area to destroy on the first bad drop. Apple will almost certainly throw its latest Ceramic Shield at the problem, but physics is physics.
For a milestone phone, Apple has decided the look is worth the fragility. The honest take is that plenty of buyers will agree, slap a case on it anyway, and never see the beautiful glass edges they paid a premium for. Which is its own kind of irony.
Would you take a more fragile phone for a genuinely futuristic, seamless design? Or is a glass slab you have to wrap in silicone just clever engineering solving a problem nobody asked for? Drop your take in the comments.
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