Apple has spent three years training its customers to live with a pill-shaped cutout at the top of their iPhones. Now, according to people familiar with the company’s internal deliberations, it isn’t sure whether to get rid of it.
The Dynamic Island — that clever software trick Apple introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro in 2022 to disguise the front-facing camera and Face ID sensor array — may or may not survive into the iPhone 18 Pro, expected in fall 2026. The reason isn’t a lack of technical ambition. It’s an engineering disagreement about whether the replacement technology is ready, and whether the tradeoffs are worth it.
MacRumors reported that Apple remains undecided on the fate of the Dynamic Island for its next-generation Pro models, citing sources who describe active internal debate between the company’s hardware engineering and industrial design teams. The core question: can Apple move the Face ID components under the display without compromising the authentication speed and reliability that users have come to expect?
That’s not a trivial question. And the answer, right now, appears to be “maybe.”
Under-display Face ID has been the holy grail of iPhone design for years. Samsung and several Chinese manufacturers have already shipped phones with under-display cameras, though the image quality from those cameras has generally been poor — smudgy selfies shot through semi-transparent OLED pixels. Apple’s challenge is harder. Face ID doesn’t just snap a photo. It projects and reads a grid of 30,000 infrared dots to build a three-dimensional map of the user’s face, and it does so in a fraction of a second. Pushing that entire system beneath an active display panel without degrading performance is an order-of-magnitude more difficult than hiding a single camera lens.
Apple’s engineers have apparently made significant progress. According to the MacRumors report, prototype iPhone 18 Pro units exist with under-display Face ID that functions acceptably in most conditions. The sticking point is edge cases — strong direct sunlight, certain angles, users wearing particular types of sunglasses. In those scenarios, the under-display system reportedly shows measurably slower unlock times compared to the current exposed sensor array.
For most companies, “measurably slower” might be acceptable. Not for Apple.
The company has a well-documented institutional obsession with the speed and reliability of biometric authentication. When Touch ID launched on the iPhone 5s in 2013, Apple’s marketing leaned hard on the idea that unlocking your phone should feel instantaneous. When Face ID replaced it on the iPhone X four years later, the transition was rocky precisely because early Face ID was perceptibly slower than a mature Touch ID sensor. Apple spent subsequent hardware generations closing that gap. Introducing a new version of Face ID that reopens it, even slightly, would cut against years of carefully managed user expectations.
So the debate inside Apple, as described by people briefed on the discussions, breaks down along predictable lines. The industrial design team, which has wanted a completely uninterrupted display surface since before the iPhone X shipped, is pushing to eliminate the Dynamic Island on the Pro models this year. The hardware engineering team responsible for Face ID is arguing for another year of development, suggesting the iPhone 19 Pro as a more realistic target for under-display deployment.
There’s a middle path being discussed too. One option on the table involves shrinking the Dynamic Island substantially — perhaps by 40% or more — while keeping the sensor array above the display but behind a smaller, less visually intrusive window. This would represent an incremental improvement rather than a dramatic one, and sources suggest it’s currently the most likely outcome if Apple’s engineers can’t resolve the remaining under-display performance issues by the time hardware specifications need to be locked, reportedly sometime in the next few weeks.
The timing pressure is real. Apple typically finalizes major hardware design decisions for fall iPhone launches by late spring, giving its supply chain partners — primarily in China, Taiwan, and South Korea — enough lead time to ramp production. Display panels for the iPhone 18 Pro are expected to be manufactured primarily by Samsung Display and LG Display, and both suppliers need confirmed specifications to begin mass production tooling.
This isn’t the first time Apple has wrestled publicly — or semi-publicly — with the Dynamic Island’s future. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted as far back as 2023 that under-display Face ID could arrive by 2025. That timeline slipped. Display industry analyst Ross Young similarly projected an under-display transition that hasn’t yet materialized. The technology has proven stubbornly difficult to perfect at Apple’s standards.
But the pressure to act is mounting from an unexpected direction: the iPhone 17 Air.
Apple’s upcoming ultra-thin iPhone model, widely expected to debut this fall alongside the standard iPhone 17 lineup, is rumored to feature a smaller Dynamic Island or possibly a simple hole-punch camera cutout with a relocated Face ID system. If the most design-forward iPhone in the lineup ships with a less intrusive front-face solution, the Pro models — which are supposed to represent the pinnacle of Apple’s engineering — would look comparatively dated retaining the full-size Dynamic Island unchanged.
Competition matters here too, though Apple would never frame it that way publicly. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra, expected later this year, is widely rumored to adopt an under-display front camera. If Samsung ships a phone with a truly unbroken display surface before Apple does, it neutralizes one of the most visible design differentiators Apple could claim. The optics of that — a company that prides itself on design leadership following rather than leading on display aesthetics — would sting.
There’s also the question of what happens to the Dynamic Island as a software concept if the hardware cutout disappears. Since its introduction, Apple has built an increasingly sophisticated set of live activities and persistent notifications around the island. Sports scores, timers, ride-sharing status, music playback — all of these surface in and around the pill-shaped area. Removing the physical cutout doesn’t necessarily mean removing the software feature. Apple could maintain a virtual Dynamic Island zone at the top of the display, preserving the interaction model while eliminating the hardware constraint that inspired it.
That would be a very Apple move. Take a limitation, turn it into a feature, then keep the feature after the limitation is gone.
The financial stakes are significant but indirect. The Dynamic Island decision won’t make or break iPhone 18 Pro sales on its own. But it contributes to the broader narrative of whether Apple’s flagship phone feels genuinely new each year — a narrative that directly affects upgrade rates among the installed base. With iPhone upgrade cycles stretching to four years or more for many users, Apple needs every visible, tangible improvement it can muster to convince people to buy new hardware.
Wall Street has been paying attention to iPhone design cycles with increasing granularity. Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring noted in a recent investor report that “form factor changes” remain the single strongest driver of iPhone upgrade intent in consumer surveys, ahead of camera improvements and processing power. Eliminating the Dynamic Island would qualify as a form factor change — a visible one that shows up in every photo of the phone, every hands-on video, every store display.
For now, the decision sits with Apple’s senior hardware team, likely with final approval from CEO Tim Cook and head of hardware engineering John Ternus. The company’s pattern in situations like this is to make a call relatively late in the development process, keeping multiple paths alive in parallel until the data forces a choice. That’s expensive — running parallel supply chain preparations for two different display configurations isn’t cheap — but it’s how Apple has operated for years, and the company’s margins can absorb the cost.
One thing seems certain. Whether it happens with the iPhone 18 Pro this fall or the iPhone 19 Pro next year, the Dynamic Island’s days are numbered. Apple didn’t invest years of R&D into under-display sensing technology to leave a visible cutout in its most premium phones indefinitely. The question is simply whether 2026 is the year the island sinks beneath the surface, or whether it gets one more season in the sun.
The answer may come down to a few milliseconds of unlock speed in direct sunlight. At Apple, that’s exactly the kind of detail that decides everything.
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