Leaker Ice Universe has dropped an interesting nugget about Apple’s 2026 flagship. According to the tipster, “The iPhone 18 Pro is highly likely to adopt a combination of an under screen Face ID and a left front camera.”
- Translation: Apple is finally ready to ditch the Dynamic Island. At least partially.
The shift matters because the Dynamic Island has become Apple’s signature move since the iPhone 14 Pro. Love it or hate it, it turned a hardware compromise into a software feature. But burying Face ID sensors beneath the display while leaving a single visible camera punch-hole represents a different calculation entirely. One that prioritizes screen real estate over brand identity.
The offset camera Apple apparently thinks is new
Here is where things get nostalgic. That “left front camera” placement? Samsung pioneered it with the Galaxy S10 back in 2019. The S10 and S10e sported an offset punch-hole in the top right corner, a design choice that felt daring at the time.
It broke symmetry. It looked different.
The industry eventually moved toward centered holes because they photograph better and feel more balanced during video calls. Samsung itself abandoned the offset approach by the S21 generation. But the concept worked. It minimized bezel intrusion and gave users more usable display space than notches ever could.
Apple arriving at this design in 2026 is not theft. It is convergence. Every manufacturer borrows, iterates, refines. Samsung took inspiration from Essential’s notch. Apple refined it into Face ID housing. Now Apple is exploring what Samsung proved viable seven years prior.
The cycle continues.
Under-screen Face ID is the real engineering puzzle
Cameras can hide under displays with acceptable quality loss. We have seen it in the Galaxy Z Fold series and a handful of Chinese flagged devices. The technology degrades image sharpness and struggles with backlight interference, but for occasional selfies, most users tolerate it.
Face ID is different.
Apple’s TrueDepth system relies on a dot projector, flood illuminator, and infrared camera working in concert. These components need clear pathways to map your face accurately in all lighting conditions.
Burying them under OLED pixels without compromising unlock speed or security represents a significantly harder problem than hiding a standard RGB camera sensor.
The real question is whether Apple has cracked reliable under-display biometric sensing or if this leak describes a half-step. Perhaps Face ID lives under the screen but still requires a small, nearly invisible cutout.
Perhaps the system only works in certain brightness conditions. Ice Universe’s track record is strong, but the specifics matter enormously here.
What the all-screen future actually looks like
If Apple pulls this off, the iPhone 18 Pro will have the cleanest display we have seen from Cupertino since the iPhone X introduced the notch in 2017. A single offset camera hole is far less intrusive than the current pill-and-hole combo, even if the Dynamic Island’s software tricks are clever.
But here is the catch. The industry has been chasing “all-screen” phones for nearly a decade. We have tried pop-up cameras, under-display sensors, and secondary rear screens. None became standard because each involved compromises users rejected or manufacturers could not scale affordably.
Apple entering this race suggests the technology has finally matured. Or at least that Cupertino believes it has. By 2026, Samsung will likely be on the Galaxy S27 with its own refined under-display solutions. The competition will be less about who did it first and more about who did it best.
The iPhone 18 Pro borrowing a page from the Galaxy S10’s design playbook is not ironic. It is inevitable. Good ideas eventually spread. The offset punch-hole worked in 2019. Under-screen Face ID could work in 2026. And if it does, we all benefit from cleaner displays and fewer visual distractions.
That is how progress actually happens in this industry. Slowly, then all at once.
