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The rumor mill has been giving the iPhone Fold a lot of attention recently, and with good reason, but we can't forget that 2027 is set to be a very big year for Apple's smartphones as well. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the original iPhone, and reports suggest that Apple has a very special phone lined up to commemorate that landmark.
One report even claimed that the anniversary model could be a "major shake-up" for the iPhone line-up, likening it to the iPhone X design being used as a template for future iPhones. One particular design rumor that keeps showing up is the possibility of a curved display that bends around all four sides of the phone.
Article continues belowCurved screens are a bad idea
I've long been critical of curved phone screens, to the point that I celebrated when Samsung finally reverted to flat screens just over two years ago with the release of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. They'd been around for 10 years by that point, and had already firmly overstayed their welcome.
Other brands had slowly started to figure out their phones were better off without curved screens, and Samsung throwing in the towel seemed to indicate that that particular gimmick was over and done with. Curved phone screens haven't vanished, but they aren't anywhere as prominent as they used to be.
This was a good thing. Curved screens come with a bunch of issues, and in the final years of their life, they only seem to offer one tangible benefit — reducing the visibility of the bezels to almost nothing. Chunky bezels are not nice to look at, but I know they're the lesser of two evils in this situation.
Back in the early days, Samsung made a bunch of grand promises about what its "Edge Display" could offer, and even featured a specialized control panel that lived in the curved section. At the time, Samsung's Edge had quite a large curve, and over the years, the amount of "Edge" space shrank down to the point where it didn't actually do anything except get in the way.
That's not hyperbole, either. I spent some years with curved phones, and I was always having issues trying to tap areas of the screen that were stuck at the far edges of the phone. You ended up having to be super careful, and 50% of the time I ended up getting it wrong and doing something completely different — like triggering Android's back gesture. That issue does not exist on flat-screen phones.
Plus, there is a big durability issue too. The curved glass wasn't as strong as flat displays, and that meant they were prone to chips and scratches, which you wouldn't normally have issues with. The shape also meant getting a good screen protector was hard, and applying it was even harder. Again, that's pretty much a non-issue with a regular flat screen.
Unfortunately, if Apple is planning on adding curves to the iPhone 20, it could start this cycle all over again.
Apple's going to bring back curved screens isn't it?
While phone companies do like to come up with their own ideas and innovations, they are just as likely to copy the competition in any way they can. They may deny it, or try to downplay their own unoriginality, but they're all guilty of it.
Apple is absolutely no exception to this, but it's also more likely to be the victim of this kind of trend-following. iPhones are, after all, the best-selling smartphones in the world, and Apple is one of the best phone makers for developing new hardware and features. MagSafe and Face ID are good recent examples, but so is the overall iPhone design that dates back to 2007. The iPhone 1 was the template for what smartphones eventually became, even though many of its rivals resisted the switch to a touch-only device.
If Apple were to suddenly adopt curved screens, you can be sure that a bunch of its rivals will start drawing up plans to redeploy curved screens on their own premium phones — assuming they haven't already started formalizing plans based on these early rumors.
I can just picture this happening following the iPhone 20's release. The phone is likely to sell very well on the basis that new iPhones rarely sell badly, and the number of rumored upgrades will make the anniversary device that much more appealing to users.
In the aftermath, you'll have a slew of curved phones arriving on the scene, and before we know it, we're stuck with curved phone screens for another decade, all because Apple decided it needed to resurrect a defunct piece of phone design.
Bottom line
Sure, Apple might be able to do the curved screen thing in a new and more effective way than we've seen so far. That would make the curved displays distinct from the awkward, delicate Edge-style displays Samsung pioneered.
If rival phone makers were to emulate that new design, we could find ourselves in a very different situation this time. But there's also the chance that Apple will get it wrong, because it's far from infallible.
The company has made a bunch of design blunders in recent years, including the Butterfly keyboard design, Apple Vision Pro's creepy Eyesight feature, and the AirPods Max's bizarre Smart Case. I can't help but fear that a curved iPhone 20 will end up joining them, and all the other things Apple got wrong over the past 50 years.
I'd much rather Apple stick with reducing the bezel as much as possible, while keeping iPhone screens so flat that you could use it in place of a spirit level; that's the dream, anyway.
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