iOS 26 brings a major redesign with Liquid Glass, and based on a new blog post from a long-time app designer, it also seems to hint strongly at a significant iPhone design change coming.
iPhone app designer notes curious iOS 26 changes that hint at future iPhones
Craig Hockenberry has been designing iPhone apps since the very beginning. And today on his blog, he shared a fascinating observation from his work optimizing an app update for iOS 26.
Hockenberry writes:
I’ve spent the few months updating Tot for iOS 26 while watching Sean do the same thing with Tapestry. One thing that’s clear from this work is that you never want a control or container that touches the edge of the screen. It’s like when safe area insets appeared in iOS 11: it wasn’t clear why you needed them until the iPhone X came along with a notch and a home indicator. And then it changed everything. There has also been an emphasis on “concentricity”. It’s an impossible thing to achieve and an easy target for ridicule. But it’s another case where Apple wants to take control of the UI elements that intersect with the physical hardware. All of this makes me think that Apple is close to introducing devices where the screen disappears seamlessly into the physical edge. Something where flexible OLED blurs the distinction between pixels and bezel. A new “wraparound” screen with safe area insets on the vertical edges of the device, just like we saw with the horizontal edges on iPhone X.
What Hockenberry’s referencing is a pattern that’s become common with Apple.
The company will often promote new design frameworks or guidance that, to the average app developer, doesn’t seem to have an obvious reason for existing.
The iOS 11 reference to safe area insets is a good example. Another is Apple’s debut of app size classes shortly before the iPad gained proper app multitasking features.
Most users running iOS 26 will just think Liquid Glass is a fun new look for their iPhone.
It won’t be clear to users that “you never want a control or container that touches the edge of the screen.”
But by pointing that out, Hockenberry is exposing how Apple’s own software already hints at future hardware that’s in the works.
Next year’s iPhone Fold could certainly be a key consideration in Liquid Glass.
But it also sounds a lot like iOS 26 is hinting at the rumored all-screen, bezel-free iPhone that may arrive in 2027.
What do you think iOS 26’s design changes for apps might tell us about future iPhones? Let us know in the comments.
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