We're like eight months away from the new iPhone.

Excited? No? Well, get pumped, because you know Apple is going to introduce a new smartphone every autumn, and this year should be no different, so, of course, the rumour mill is firing up with the latest speculation. A new report from South Korea's ETNews, for instance, has claimed Apple's new iPhones will have a smaller notch.

Technically, it said they'll have a smaller notch from 2019 and going forward. Oddly, this isn't the first time we've heard news about not this year's iPhone but next year's model. The rumour mill is certainly getting ahead of itself, right? You see, Bloomberg has already said Apple is developing a “3D sensor” for the back of the 2019 iPhone.

The company is supposedly mulling a different technology from the TrueDepth sensor system found on the front of 2017 iPhone X. So, piggybacking off that report, ETNews has now claimed that Apple wants to combine the front-facing camera and Face ID on next year's iPhone in order to cut the size of the TrueDepth sensor housing.

Apple wants to improve Face ID, essentially, but it also wants to combine parts to save space and subsequently reduce the size of the front notch, which some love and some hate. The report specifies a singular face recognition module, though Face ID is currently powered by an infrared camera, dot projector, and flood illuminator.

The report doesn't mention how Apple would manage to combine all those components. We'll keep you posted. But if you're interested in the 2018 iPhone, be sure to check out Pocket-lint's rumour guide here: