If you don’t like change, look away immediately. You are not going to like this.
Apple will be removing the home button in their next generation of iPhones, according to a new report.
No longer will you be able to feel the safety of your home screen in the instantaneous click of a button.
PexelsInstead, Apple are planning to replace the friendly round tangible button with a sensor embedded into the handset screen.
Apple plans to stretch the touch screen to the edge of the handset, meaning the home screen button will have to be replaced with something a little less clickable.
According to the Independent, Apple will have to develop a new version of its current Touch ID fingerprint sensor – complete with optional ‘clickability’ – because it can’t be included within the battery-saving high resolution OLED screens Apple hope to implement in new models.
YouTubeWhile the changes might seem like a gratuitous waste of time at the moment, they mark the beginning of a range of new additions that could develop into a biometric system for checking who is using the phone – and make you feel like a spy every time you answer the phone to your mum.
The new sensor technology will work alongside facial recognition software, according to KGI Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo, who has been a reliable source of Apple leaks for years.
GIPHYPresumably, this intelligent design will eventually become the primary way of logging into a phone and consequentially will improve the safety of all the data stored on you iPhone.
The change has been rumoured for a while among Inspector Gadget types and it turns out – alarmingly – Apple have tested the functionality on us human guinea pigs right under our noses.
Apple trialled this change when they released the iPhone 7 which features a home screen sensor disguised as a button.
GettyThe iPhone 7 ‘button’ uses a set of sensors to know when it is being pressed, and precise motors to give the feeling that a button is being pushed for the user.
Between this and the loss of a heaphone jack, at least we can figure out what is real and what is not by the time we get the iPhone 8 and recover from this betrayal.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.