If This iPhone 12 Flat-Side Leak Is Accurate, We're ALL IN
A video / set of images of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro Max family of devices leaked overnight with a vision of the future. The imagery in the video was made, rendered, using leaked information on schematics and features included with the still-in-development iPhone 12 family. The headline "EXCLUSIVE iPhone 12 Pro Max Design Leaks! It's HUGE" sort of buries the lede – the device is basically the marriage of iPhone 11, iPad Pro 2018, and the classic iPhone 4.
If you take a peek at the iPad Pro from 2018 you'll see how the flat-edged design began to slide back into Apple's collection of mobile devices. The design ethos never really left completely, but one might be forgiven for expecting that the design of the iPhone SE (2nd gen, 2020) meant that Apple might've left the iPhone 4 flat-side design in the past. The iPhone SE (2nd gen) uses a iPhone 7/8 design with round sides, while the iPhone SE (the original) looks just like an original iPhone 4 or 5.
The new design we see leaked today is not finalized. It's guaranteed to be inaccurate to some degree, per the creator of the video Max Weinbach. Instead of looking at the finalized design, we're looking at what's essentially a "70% complete" design with some inaccuracies, on purpose, to avoid spilling the identity of the original leaker of the design.
The claim here is that "basically [the design of the] display and body [are] correct but the camera setup is wrong as a security measure." The design was based on a CAD blueprint (and earlier leaks) which show a notch that's currently expected to be slightly smaller by the time Apple gets to production.
This new iPhone 12 Pro Max design – and by default, the rest of the iPhone 12 family – will likely have a svelte appearance that once again embraces right angles, rather than trying to meld them all into a single, seamless piece of metal-rimmed glass.
The latest leaks suggest that this device's camera bump will be slightly more pronounced than in the iPhone 11 family. While the bump is bigger, the entire device is smaller, at 8.65mm instead of 9.31mm for the body of one of the iPhone 12 devices that'll likely be released this year.
Take a peek at the video above and see if the design strikes your fancy. This might well be a good general environment in which the design for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro family might exist. We don't yet know the full extent to which this design will be executed, and we don't yet know if the devices will be released on the same schedule as suggested by precedent.
If we were to look to past years for iPhone releases, we could expect that the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro collection would be revealed in September of 2020, then released in October of 2020. The iPhone 12 collection roadmap was leaked in part earlier this year with a list of potential models – four in total. It's not yet clear whether that list was meant to account for the iPhone SE (2nd gen, 2020) – we shall see!