iPhone 20 · Design & display
The design is the best-sourced part of the iPhone 20 story — and the front of the phone is the most contested. Here is what two Bloomberg reports agree on, and where the leakers and the analysts split.
Rumor, not fact. Everything here is reporting and speculation. Apple has announced none of it. Each claim is rated by how good its sourcing is.
The phrase to remember is Gurman's: curved glass around all corners and edges.
Every iPhone since the iPhone 12 has had flat sides and a flat screen. This is a return to curves, but a more extreme one than anything Apple has shipped — the glass is said to fall away on all four sides rather than just left and right, which is what the “four-sided” or “quad-curved” display rumors refer to.
Note what the reports do not say. They do not describe a seamless glass pebble. Bloomberg is specific that a metal band runs around the middle. That distinction is the key to making sense of the cancellation scare: the version that was reportedly dropped looks to have been a more ambitious all-glass concept, not this one.
Gurman's September 4 report says the anniversary iPhone will have "curved glass around all corners and edges" and thinner bezels, and describes it as the biggest overhaul to the Pro line since the iPhone X.
Bloomberg's August 11, 2026 report says glass is used on both the front and back of the phones, with the material curving into the sides of the device and a metal band running around the middle.
The frame is said to be a thin polished band, potentially in a material other than the aluminum Apple uses on its straight-edged models. The display is described as curving onto the sides rather than following one single consistent curve.
Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital says Apple may reuse the glass assembly process it developed for iPhone Air, modified to produce more rounded glass components. The same source claims much better heat dissipation and a thinner body.
Our read: Single hit-or-miss source. The manufacturing detail is believable; the thermal claim is unverifiable this far out.
MacRumors: iPhone 20 curved glass to be like iPhone Air ↗AppleInsider: borrows from iPhone Air, gets better cooling ↗
Gurman reports the anniversary design is so "extraordinarily complex" that Apple plans to build it in China, even as the company shifts most iPhone production to India.
Our read: This dates from April 2025, well over a year ago. Nothing since has contradicted it, but manufacturing plans are the kind of detail that moves.
MacRumors: 20th-anniversary iPhone "extraordinarily complex" ↗
Two anniversary phones are expected, mirroring this year's iPhone 18 Pro (6.3-inch) and iPhone 18 Pro Max (6.9-inch).
Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station, as reported by AppleInsider, says the larger model uses a 6.96-inch panel that Apple will market as a 7-inch screen — which would be the largest display ever on an iPhone.
Our read: Smaller than it sounds: the iPhone 17 Pro Max was already 6.86 inches. Going to 6.96 is a tenth of an inch, mostly from slimmer bezels, not a meaningfully bigger phone.
This is the biggest open fight in iPhone 20 coverage, and the place where concept videos diverge furthest from the reporting. An “all-screen” front needs two things hidden under the display: the Face ID sensors and the selfie camera. They are not equally hard.
Infrared Face ID components can work through a display sooner than a camera can, because a camera behind pixels still produces visibly worse photos. So the expected order is a shrinking Dynamic Island first, under-display Face ID second, and an under-display camera last. The disagreement is only about how far along that path the 2027 phone gets.
Current reporting points to a gradual sequence: the Dynamic Island keeps shrinking, Face ID components move beneath the panel, and an under-display selfie camera arrives last — because image quality still degrades when a lens sits behind the display.
This is the biggest open fight. Display analyst Ross Young says Apple will not have under-display Face ID ready for a 2027 iPhone, and does not expect a notch-free, all-screen iPhone until 2030.
Our read: Young has one of the best records on Apple displays. Expect a smaller cutout in 2027, not zero cutout.
An August 2026 render leak from Yogesh Brar showed what looked like a single hole-punch selfie camera.
Our read: The images had oddities and mismatches — including a missing Camera Control and strange-looking buttons — that suggest a generative AI tool may have been used to make them. Treat with caution.
Apple is expected to adopt Samsung OLED displays using Color Filter on Encapsulation (COE). COE thins the overall display stack and lets more light through, which improves brightness while cutting power draw.
COE matters more on this phone than it would on a flat one. A thinner display stack is easier to bend around a tightly curved edge, and the efficiency gain offsets some of the battery volume a thinner body gives up.
According to Bloomberg, glass on the front and back that curves into the sides, with curved glass around all corners and edges, thinner bezels and a thin metal band around the middle. The raised camera plateau on the back is expected to remain.
Glass-centric, not literally all glass. Bloomberg describes a metal band running around the middle of the phone between the front and back glass. An earlier, more ambitious all-glass concept appears to have been dropped.
Probably not in 2027. Display analyst Ross Young says under-display Face ID will not be ready for a 2027 iPhone, and he does not expect a fully notch-free, all-screen iPhone until 2030. Expect a smaller Dynamic Island instead.
Possibly. Weibo leaker Instant Digital says Apple is reviving Project Bongo, its shelved solid-state haptic button design. The buttons would not physically move but would still be there to press. Apple prototyped and cancelled the same idea once before, so treat it as plausible rather than likely.
Treat them with caution. The August 2026 renders from Yogesh Brar show a hole-punch selfie camera, but coverage noted a missing Camera Control and odd-looking buttons — the kind of mismatches that suggest an AI image generator was involved.
Color Filter on Encapsulation. It replaces the polarizer layer in an OLED panel with a color filter applied directly onto the encapsulation layer. The display stack gets thinner, more light gets through, brightness goes up and power draw goes down. ETNews reports Samsung will supply COE panels for the anniversary iPhone.
Two sizes, roughly matching today's 6.3-inch iPhone 18 Pro and 6.9-inch iPhone 18 Pro Max. Digital Chat Station says the larger panel is 6.96 inches and will be marketed as 7 inches.
There are no credible color leaks yet. Color information normally surfaces from the supply chain in the last few months before launch, so anything claiming to know 2027 colors today is speculation.