Apple could introduce a true all-screen iPhone 12 in 2020

Apple iPhone X was the first smartphone that came with a notch design, way back in 2017. Other smartphone manufacturers followed suit and flood the market with the notch-screen phone. However, since notch design wasn’t appealing to a lot of people, some manufacturers tried alternatives such as punch-hole, pop-up selfie camera.

2020 may be the year that will no longer need alternatives as the truly all-screen design phone could be a reality. And one of the smartphone manufacturers that is working on an all-screen phone is Apple. The Cupertino-based tech giant applied for three notable design patents in Japan, showing an iPhone without a notch. The patent was published by the JPO (Japan Patent Office) on December 23, 2019(via letsgodigital).

As you can see in the above image, there is no selfie camera or FaceID visible. It means the selfie camera is placed under the screen. It’s also likely that the patented iPhone doesn’t have a FaceID, instead, it might use an under-the-display fingerprint sensor.

Unfortunately, the patented iPhone doesn’t tell us anything about the back, leaving us in the dark about what the main camera will like.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you’d know that the first look of the iPhone 12 leaked recently, and leaked renders clearly suggested a notch-screen iPhone. To solve the contradiction, Apple might launch an iPhone 11-like iPhone and a truly notch-less iPhone in 2020, similar to what they did back in 2017 — the company launched iPhone 8, which looks a lot like the iPhone 7, and iPhone X that came with a notch design.