This morning, summarizing Apple’s “product blitz” he expects for 2027, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that Apple plans to release a “mostly glass, curved iPhone” with no notches for the display this year, which falls on the 20th anniversary of the iPhone.
This follows a report from The Information last weekend that said that “at least one 2027 iPhone model will have the front-facing camera placed below the screen to make the display truly ‘edge-to-edge’.” Late last year, a report from The Elec said that Apple is working with its display partners to create a bezel-less iPhone, but not one that curves the display down the side of the phone, a trick that companies like Samsung and Vivo have used in the past.
But the “mostly glass, curved” part of Gourmet’s prediction is more interesting to me, because what the hell does that mean? After all, I’d describe the iPhone 15 Pro that’s on my desk right now as “mostly glass,” with the only external metal element around the camera lenses and in a titanium frame that the front and back curve toward. Assuming he’s not describing a banana-shaped iPhone, the closest hints are likely to be found in Apple patents made public over the years, such as one from 2019 that describes a phone encased in glass that “forms a continuous loop” around the device.
In addition to changing the iPhone, Gurman describes what sounds like a big year for Apple. He reiterates previous reports that the first foldable iPhone is due by 2027, and that the company will release the first smart glasses to compete with Meta Ray-Bans in the same year. As well as the rumored AirPods headphones and Apple Watch with a camera, he says.
Gurman also suggests that Apple’s home robot – a desktop robot equipped with an “artificial intelligence assistant with its own personality” – will appear in 2027. When you mention “personality,” it’s hard not to think of the magical robotic lamp that Apple’s internal researchers are working on.
Finally, Gurman writes that by 2027, Apple may finally release an LLM-based Siri and possibly create new chips for server-side AI processing. A December report by The Information covered this development and suggested that the team working on Apple’s new AI chips is the same Israeli silicon development group that “played an important role in the development” of Apple’s silicon chips that allowed the company to ditch Intel chips in its Mac computers in 2020.
