Microchip facility shuts telling us to expect under-display Face ID on iPhone 16 Pro line this year

A timeline published last year by highly accurate leaker Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) suggested that the first iPhone models to have an under-display Face ID and a small punch-hole cutout for the front-facing camera would be the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max in 2025. But the closing of a microchip facility in Britain seems to have delivered a clue suggesting that the Face ID module could be moved under the display as soon as this year with the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, a microchip facility in Britain that is owned by U.S. semiconductor company Coherent recently lost its biggest customer. This has forced the British facility to close. But the story goes deeper than that, says the Telegraph. The newspaper (Google it) says that the customer's name was a little firm that you might have heard of-Apple. The facility closing produced components for Apple's Face ID.

The story in the paper says that Apple stopped placing orders for these components due to changes being made to the next version of the iPhone. All of this could indicate that the under-display Face ID will arrive this year with the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Interestingly, when DSCC's Young originally wrote about the under-display Face ID, he indicated that it would debut with the iPhone 16 Pro models this year before pushing the time frame back to 2025.

Young's roadmap also forecasts that the first "all-screen" iPhone will be released in 2027 when the iPhone 19 Pro and the iPhone 19 Pro Max will feature the under-display Face ID and an under-display front-facing camera. 

The iPhone 16 series should be introduced this coming September. The iPhone 16 Pro models will both have 5x optical zoom thanks to the Tetraprism periscope lens. The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will also be equipped with a new 48MP wide-angle camera and a new 48MP Wide (Main) camera. They will be powered by the A18 Pro application processor built on TSMC's second-generation 3nm node (N3E). 

If the report out of Britain means what we think it means, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max could both feature under-display Face ID.