The iPhone 14 Pro’s camera cutout might look a lot like a notch after all

The latest leak from Chinese social media appears to confirm that Apple’s new phones for this fall will be branded as the iPhone 14 generation, as well as hinting at an unexpected direction for the notch design.

A Weibo user (via ShrimpApplePro) has posted photos allegedly showing one of the new handsets, together with a sticker from the packaging labelled “iPhone 14 Pro.” The accompanying text (via Google Translate) reads: “Foxconn boss broke the news again. The pills are nailed, the whole system is 6G, and the pro box is also white. I think this pill is acceptable on a 6.7 screen. 6.1 is too inconsistent. Everything is still waiting for the press conference.”

The latter two numbers obviously refer to the screen size in inches (the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro will have 6.1-inch displays, while the iPhone 14 Max and 14 Pro Max will measure 6.7 inches), while 6G presumably means a 6GB allocation of RAM rather than the successor to 5G, which doesn’t actually exist yet.

That’s a worthy increase for the non-Pro models, which currently run 4GB, but not a change for the Pro handsets. It had been thought, based on a report in February, that the iPhone 14 Pro might jump to 8GB, so we’ll have to wait and see when the new phones are torn down since Apple doesn’t list RAM on the iPhone spec sheet.

The “pill,” meanwhile, is a reference to the new aperture for the front-facing sensors: it’s widely predicted that the notch on the Pro models will be replaced by a hole and pill design that looks much different than the current notch. The odd thing here, however, is that the photo doesn’t seem to show a hole and pill. Rather, it shows a single continuous black bar.

Is this a last-minute change of plans, an incomplete dummy unit, or simply deceptive lighting? It’s also possible that there’s a screen protector over the camera cutouts or Apple is simply blacking out the area between the camera and the sensors. A report by Macrumors suggests that this may be the case. If true, the notchless iPhone 14 Pro will look a lot like the notched iPhone 13 Pro.

As for the branding, you might be wondering if that’s really much of a revelation. Following the launch of the iPhone 11 in 2019, the iPhone 12 in 2020, and the iPhone 13 in 2021, it’s scarcely surprising that Apple would call its late-2022 handsets the iPhone 14, 14 Pro and so on. But the company hasn’t always behaved with such strict numerical logic: in the past it frequently launched S-class upgrades, such as the iPhone 4s, 6s and Xs, in between full-version launches. There was always a small chance that this year would see the announcement of the iPhone 13s, though Apple hasn’t released an “S” phone since 2018.

Indeed, and bearing in mind that the photos show the sticker for the iPhone 14 Pro model only, it’s still possible that Apple will brand the non-Pro handsets as being part of the 13 generation. The company is expected to push customers to buy the more expensive phones by strongly differentiating between them with additional features, a more modern design and processors from different generations. Calling the new devices the iPhone 13s and the iPhone 14 Pro, while unexpected, would make a certain amount of sense from that perspective.

In any case, we’ll find out next week, when all the announcements at Apple’s September 7 event will be covered here on Macworld. Until then, keep up with the very latest rumors with our regularly updated iPhone 14 guide.