iPhone Pro′s edge-to-edge screen and what it could mean for the UI

Apple’s accidental release of the HomePod firmware prompted Steven Throughthon-Smith’s to go digging through and uncovering a lot of exciting pieces on the upcoming high-end iPhone, codename D22. Allen Pike then had an interesting take on what that new form factor could mean for the UI.

Allen’s idea of how the UI will change on the new phone match many of my own thoughts. iOS 11’s large navbars seems like the biggest hint of upcoming change, and moving the left and right navbar items next to the home button allows for a much more convienient bottom oriented navigation. And everything just seems to fit.

I wanted to explore how this could look with a little more graphical polish, to try and figure out which way Apple would be most likely to go. I’ve used the same App Store Top Charts-screen as Allen did.

iPhone D22, embracing the notch

iPhone D22, hiding the notch

iPhone D22, hiding the notch & blending the bottom bar

Side-by-side comparison

It’ll be fun to see how wrong this was when the actual announcement comes around. Either way it’s impressive how much more UI will fit in the same form factor.

Beforehand I was fond of the idea of blending the statusbar with the hardware, but seeing the mockups like this, I’m not so sure. Blending the statusbar with the hardware makes the screen seem smaller than it is and the result is less striking. I’m now leaning towards that Apple will embrace the notch.

Update 10th of August

The white front bezel goes well with Apple embracing the notch: