A few months after Samsung introduced an anti-reflective glass display to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, a well-known leaker claimed Apple was working on something similar. The iPhone 16 would not get an anti-reflective coating, but Apple would bring the display feature to the iPhone 17 Pro models.
The spring 2024 report said Apple had spent billions on equipment in Japan that would be shipped to China, where it would be incorporated into the iPhone supply chain. Apple’s suppliers would then make glass covers featuring “super-hard” anti-reflective layers that would be more scratch-resistant than before.
As I explained last spring, I’d want an anti-reflective display in an iPhone. As for the scratch resistance, I won’t stop using screen protectors anytime soon, so I don’t care how well the iPhone display handles those scratches.
However, more than a year later, a report says that Apple has scrapped plans for the iPhone 17 Pro display upgrade. Apparently, Apple can’t make as many anti-reflective displays as it would need to satisfy the iPhone 17 Pro demand.
According to a MacRumors reliable source, Apple may have canceled the super scratch-resistant anti-reflective display coating planned for the iPhone 17 Pro models.
The report says the process for adding the anti-reflective coating to the iPhone display was too slow. Apple can’t scale it to cover all the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max it will produce this year, so the feature has been abandoned. There’s no telling whether Apple will give any of the future iPhone 18 models the anti-reflective coating, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple still explored that possibility.
Apple offers nano-texture displays for the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro. These screens can reduce glare, but they’re optional, meaning you have to pay more money to get them. Anti-reflectiveness is a bigger deal for gadgets with larger displays like tablets and laptops.
But if Samsung continues using anti-reflective display tech in its high-end Galaxy S phones, Apple will probably want to bring it to the iPhone. Then again, Samsung doesn’t sell as many Galaxy S Ultra units as Apple’s iPhone Pro and Pro Max combined. It’s much easier for Samsung to give its phones the anti-reflective coating, assuming the tech is similar and similarly difficult to apply.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the improved anti-reflective coating if it were available from the iPhone 17 Pro models. The iPhone 17 flavor I want to buy is the iPhone 17 Air, which qualifies as a mid-range model. It won’t feature an anti-reflective screen but should get 120Hz refresh rate support.
