iPhone 14 Pro's pill-shaped camera hole might have a circular one for company

Iphone 14 Pro Cutout Leak (Image credit: Ross Young)

What you need to know

A new tweet by display analyst Ross Young suggests iPhone 14 Pro will have two cutouts to replace the notch.
A round hole is expected to sit beside the previously rumored pill-shaped cutout.
The new hole is expected to house the Face ID dot projector.

Rumors of what the upcoming iPhone 14 camera situation will look like keep on coming. While we were fairly convinced that a pill-shaped cutout would replace the notch on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, a new report points to a circular hole sitting alongside it.

That report comes via display analyst Ross Young who not only says that a circular hole will join the pill-shaped one but also has a photo to go with it.

We now believe Apple will have a hole + pill design on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. The smaller hole will not be invisible...The two hole concept will be unique to Apple, like the notch, not similar to all the pill models from Huawei...Let's see those new renders pic.twitter.com/Udt8cTKzPZWe now believe Apple will have a hole + pill design on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. The smaller hole will not be invisible...The two hole concept will be unique to Apple, like the notch, not similar to all the pill models from Huawei...Let's see those new renders pic.twitter.com/Udt8cTKzPZ— Ross Young (@DSCCRoss) January 12, 2022 January 12, 2022

It's thought that the circular hole will play host to the Face ID dot projector while the pill-shaped one will house the front-facing camera and Face ID infrared camera.

While such a design seems cluttered or unwieldy at first blush, there might actually be a method to Apple's madness here. It's possible that by doing something unusual it will continue to be easy to differentiate an iPhone in the same way a notch also made possible. A hole and pill shape will likely replace the notch on all of Apple's glyphs, for example.

This latest round of leaks continues to make iPhone 14 Pro one of the more interesting releases of 2022, assuming they turn out to be accurate. Love it or hate it, there's no doubt that a new look would grab attention. And the best iPhone is always one that gets people talking — especially in terms of free advertising for Apple.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.