For about eighteen months, the iPhone 18 Pro was going to be the one that finally hid Face ID under the display. Every roadmap included it. Analysts attached it to this specific model. It was treated as settled.
It is not happening. The reporting has quietly walked back to something much smaller, and the story of how that happened is a useful lesson in how the leak cycle actually works, because nobody ever publishes a correction.
What the Rumour Claimed
The version that circulated through 2025 and into early 2026 was specific. Apple would move the Face ID components beneath the OLED panel, leaving only the front camera visible as a single hole punch in the corner of the screen. The Dynamic Island, as a shape, would be gone.
That is a real engineering goal Apple has been working towards, and it had a plausible timeline attached. Display supply chain sources described panels with the transparency needed to shoot infrared through them. Multiple outlets ran it. The iPhone 18 Pro became the model where the front of the iPhone finally changed properly.
What the Reporting Says Now
A Dynamic Island roughly 35% smaller. Same shape, same components, less of it.
That is a considerably more modest change than removing Face ID from view entirely, and the current reporting is well supported. Apple appears to have designed the new Siri interface in iOS 27 around the smaller shape, which is the strongest kind of evidence available before a launch, because it comes from Apple’s own shipping software rather than from a factory.
A smaller Island is a genuine improvement. It is also not what people were told they were getting, and the gap between the two is where disappointment on keynote day comes from.
Why It Collapsed
Putting Face ID under a display means firing an infrared dot projector through the panel and reading the pattern back through it. OLED panels are not transparent to infrared. Manufacturers can make sections more transparent by thinning the layers and reducing pixel density in that region, and both of those cost you image quality in the exact area of the screen people look at most.
Android manufacturers have shipped under-display front cameras and the results were visibly worse in that patch of screen, with a faint haze and a different pixel structure that shows on light backgrounds. Face ID is harder than a camera, because it needs to project and read thousands of infrared points accurately enough to be a security boundary rather than a convenience.
Apple faced a choice between a visible artefact on a $1,300 phone and delaying. It delayed, which is the same call it has made every time this feature has come up.
The Warning Signs Were There
Three things should have lowered confidence in this rumour long before it faded.
It had slipped before. Under-display Face ID was attached to the iPhone 16 Pro, then the 17 Pro, then the 18 Pro. A feature that moves to the next model every year is a feature that is not ready, and the pattern is more informative than any individual report.
The sourcing was upstream. Display panel makers develop capabilities years ahead of anyone using them. A supplier demonstrating a transparent panel section tells you the technology exists, not that Apple has accepted it. The gap between “Samsung Display can make this” and “Apple will ship this” is where most display rumours die.
Dynamic Island rumours have a bad record specifically. We wrote about this in May, when the numbers circulating had already changed repeatedly across a single cycle. That scepticism turned out to be warranted on the big claim while the modest one held.
The Other Claim Worth Watching
The 35% figure itself deserves less confidence than the direction it points in. Percentage claims about the Island have been wrong in multiple cycles, and there is no obvious way for a supply chain source to know the exact number before Apple finalises the software that draws around it.
Expect a smaller Island. Do not expect 35% precisely, and do not be surprised if the shipping phone lands nearer 20%.
What Held Up Instead
Worth being fair to the leak cycle here, because plenty of it has been right. The variable aperture camera, the A20 Pro on a 2nm process, the C2 modem replacing Qualcomm, the thicker Pro Max with a larger battery and Dark Cherry as the hero colour have all held steady across months of independent reporting from different sources.
That is the tell. Claims that survive corroboration from unconnected sources over time are usually real. Claims that keep moving to next year’s model are usually a technology Apple wants and cannot yet ship. Three long-promised features are landing at once this year, and under-display Face ID is not one of them.
It will arrive eventually. Reporting now points to the 20th anniversary iPhone as the model where Apple finally clears the front of the display, which fits both the engineering timeline and Apple’s fondness for saving big changes for anniversaries. We have what that phone is shaping up to be here.
Everything gets settled at Apple’s September event. If a hole-punch iPhone appears on stage, this article was wrong and I will say so.
Join the Conversation
Were you counting on under-display Face ID this year, and does a smaller Dynamic Island feel like enough? And which iPhone rumour do you think is next to quietly disappear? Let us know in the comments.
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