Apple’s 20th Anniversary iPhone may achieve Steve Jobs’ vision of a seamless sheet of glass

Steve Jobs envisioned the iPhone as a “seamless sheet of glass,” a concept he articulated during the development of the original iPhone, which launched in 2007. This vision was about creating a device that felt like a single, uninterrupted piece of technology—minimalist, elegant, and intuitive. Jobs wanted the iPhone to be a smooth, edge-to-edge glass surface with no physical buttons cluttering the front, allowing the display to be the primary interface. This idea was revolutionary at a time when smartphones like BlackBerrys were dominated by physical keyboards and complex button layouts.
The first iPhone partially realized this vision with its 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, a single home button, and a sleek glass front, but it still had a metal band and a plastic back in some models. Over the years, Apple iterated toward Jobs’ vision: the iPhone X in 2017 removed the home button for a near edge-to-edge display and subsequent models refined the design with features like Face ID and gesture navigation to maximize the “seamless” experience. Jobs’ emphasis on simplicity and elegance continues to influence Apple’s design philosophy, even as modern iPhones sport a “Dynamic Island” to house cameras and sensors, but Jobs’ “seamless sheet of glass” may finally arrive relatively soon.
Tim Hardwick for MacRumors:
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Apple is preparing a “bold” new iPhone Pro model for the iPhone’s 20th anniversary in 2027, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Gurman recently reported that the Pro models are expected to gain a smaller Dynamic Island in 2026 or 2027, as Apple moves more of its front-facing components beneath the display. While it’s not yet clear whether the selfie camera or the TrueDepth system behind Face ID will make the move first, display analyst Ross Young has said under-screen Face ID is currently slated to arrive in 2026.
That would mean under-display Face ID could debut as early as next year, in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. In that scenario, the Dynamic Island would shrink but remain, housing a front-facing camera via a small cutout. The next logical step – for 2027’s flagship – would be to move that camera under the display as well, finally achieving the full-screen design that has long been rumored. That progression aligns with Young’s display roadmap, which has predicted this shift since 2023.
Backing this up, Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station recently claimed the next two iPhone generations – iPhone 17 and iPhone 18 – will both retain the Dynamic Island. But for the 2027 model, Apple may be on track to complete its transition to a seamless display.

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MacDailyNews Take: The Dynamic Island is actually useful, and much less of an inelegant kludge than the horrid notch, but it can remain as an on-screen user interface element, appearing whenever it’s needed and completely disappearing when not in use instead of sitting there as a physical display cutout.

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