iPhone 18 Pro Display Rumours: Under-Screen Face ID, but Reports Disagree How Much

Every leaked iPhone 18 Pro render and dummy unit agrees on one thing: the Dynamic Island is shrinking. What they don't agree on is why — and specifically, how much of the Face ID sensor stack Apple has actually managed to hide beneath the OLED panel this year. We've tracked the reporting since January, and it's worth laying out where it's genuinely settled versus still contested.

Display Sizes Carry Over

The least controversial part of the display story: panel sizes aren't changing. Reporting consistently points to a 6.27–6.3-inch panel on the standard Pro and a 6.86–6.9-inch panel on the Pro Max — in the same range as the iPhone 17 Pro line. LTPO OLED technology and the 1–120Hz ProMotion refresh rate are also expected to carry over largely unchanged, with an improved always-on implementation rather than a fundamentally new panel type.

Full Under-Display Face ID, or Just the Flood Illuminator?

This is where sources genuinely split. The Information reported in December 2025 that Apple would move the entire front camera to the top-left corner of the display and eliminate the pill-shaped cutout entirely. That claim was picked up widely through the spring. But in January 2026, Weibo leaker Instant Digital pushed back directly on that interpretation, arguing that early Chinese and Korean supply-chain reports about relocating an infrared Face ID component had been mistranslated into English-language coverage as a full hole-punch redesign. According to Instant Digital's account, only the flood illuminator — the simplest of the three Face ID components optically — is moving under the display. The dot projector, infrared camera, and selfie camera would stay centred in a smaller, pill-shaped cutout rather than disappearing.

Since then, the "partial migration" version of the story has picked up more independent support: analyst Ross Young's display-supply-chain reporting, Mark Gurman's coverage, and a March 2026 screen-protector leak from Ice Universe — a leaker with a strong Apple hardware track record — all point toward a shrunken pill cutout rather than a full hole-punch. MacRumors' own synthesis, as of its most recent update, treats the smaller-but-still-present Dynamic Island as the more likely outcome, with a fully sensor-free display more plausible for a future generation, possibly the rumoured 2027 20th-anniversary iPhone.

How Much Smaller?

One data point worth treating cautiously: a solutions-focused industry writeup put the reduction at approximately 35% narrower than the current Dynamic Island. That figure hasn't been independently corroborated by the leakers with the strongest track records on this story (Gurman, Young, Ice Universe), so treat it as one outlet's estimate rather than a settled number — the more consistently repeated claim across sources is simply "smaller," without an agreed percentage.

One Adjacent Wrinkle: the Black Colour Debate

A February 2026 Instant Digital post claimed Apple's Pro lineup would skip black entirely for a second straight year. That claim was later superseded by May 2026's physical dummy-unit leaks from Sonny Dickson, which clearly show a black/dark-gray finish alongside Dark Cherry, Light Blue, and Silver — a good reminder that even reliable leakers occasionally get contradicted by later, more concrete evidence. We cover the full colour and storage picture in a dedicated article.

Apple has not confirmed any display or Face ID change discussed in this article. Where sources conflict, we've noted both versions rather than presenting one as settled — everything here remains subject to change until Apple's official announcement.