It’s only May 2025, but Apple watchers are already buzzing about what the tech giant has in store for 2027—the iPhone’s 20th anniversary. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman teases a “mostly glass, curved iPhone” that does away with any notches or hole-punches in the display, aiming for a seamless, edge-to-edge experience. This isn’t just another incremental update; this could be the biggest design overhaul since the iPhone X ushered in the notch back in 2017.
When Gurman describes something as “mostly glass, curved,” you’ve got to ask: what does that actually look like? After all, the iPhone 15 Pro Max already features a front and back that’s predominantly glass, with a thin titanium frame hugging the edges. One clue may lie in patent filings. Back in 2019, Apple patented a design for a device encased in a single glass loop, curving continuously around the sides—something we’ve only seen in concept renders so far. If Apple can nail the thermal-management challenges (glass isn’t great at dissipating heat), we might finally hold what feels like one continuous piece of glass.
This all-glass approach could also pave the way for novel colors and light-bending effects. Imagine sunbeams refracting off a handset that curves gently into your palm, without a hint of metal breaking up the surface. It’s a radical departure from today’s flat, bezel-trimmed look.
Gurman’s scoop echoes a report from The Information suggesting that at least one 2027 iPhone will tuck the front-facing camera beneath the screen, eliminating any display interruptions. That under-display camera tech has matured considerably: Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold5 already hides its selfie shooter under a pixelated layer of the main display, but results remain a bit fuzzy. Apple will need a next-gen solution for clarity—perhaps leveraging computational photography tricks to stitch multiple sub-pixels together into a single crisp image.
Last year The Elec reported that Apple’s display partners are working on a truly bezel-less design—but without the aggressive side-curves found on some Samsung and Vivo models. Gurman’s mention of “curved” suggests Apple might finally embrace a subtle wraparound, more elegant than the sometimes exaggerated bends on other devices.
The mostly-glass model is just one piece of Gurman’s grand vision. He reaffirms that Apple’s first foldable iPhone should arrive by 2027, joining the likes of Samsung’s Z Fold and Huawei’s Mate X series, but with Apple’s own crease-free twist and a titanium chassis. Imagine an iPhone that unfolds to the size of a small iPad, then snaps shut into a pocketable form.
That’s not all: Apple’s long-rumored smart glasses—often dubbed “Apple Glass”—are also penciled in for 2027. Expect a Ray-Ban-style wearable with tiny cameras, speakers, and mics, leaning on Apple’s Visual Intelligence features to overlay info on the world around you. They’ll need custom silicon to handle AR processing on-device, perhaps the same Israel-based chip group that powered Apple’s M1 transition.
Meanwhile, Gurman teases “camera-equipped” AirPods and Apple Watches in the pipeline. Think fitness-tracking watches that capture quick video clips, or earbuds that can livestream POV angles. It’s very Apple to take existing form factors and layer on surprising new sensors.
Perhaps the most whimsical item in the roster is Apple’s home robot: a tabletop machine complete with a robotic arm and an “AI assistant with its own personality.” This isn’t quite the immersive mobile robot teased in patent filings, nor the adorable lamp-bot videos from Apple’s internal prototyping teams, but something you’d place on a kitchen counter or office desk. It could fetch small items, deliver reminders, or simply chat in a Siri-like voice that feels more alive.
Behind the scenes, this bot likely runs on Apple Intelligence—Apple’s on-device AI framework introduced alongside iOS 18—coupled with new server-side chips designed specifically for large-language-model workloads. In December, The Information reported that the same Israel team that built the M1-family chips is now crafting Apple’s first AI accelerators for cloud tasks.
Speaking of AI, Gurman predicts that by 2027, we’ll get an LLM-powered Siri—finally catching up to Google’s Gemini and Amazon’s Alexa in conversational smarts. Imagine asking Siri to draft an email, summarize a news article, or even debug a bit of Swift code on the fly. Apple’s challenge will be balancing local on-device inference with server-side processing, all while preserving user privacy.
If these rumors hold, 2027 will be a landmark year for Apple: a celebration of two decades of the iPhone, but with a bold leap into new design territory. A mostly glass, curved flagship sitting alongside a foldable model, smart glasses, camera-laden wearables, and even a personal robot—this could reshape our expectations for what a “phone company” can deliver.
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