We know what the iPhone 7 will look like, but new reports have revealed an important design change that is very easy to miss…
Apple is redesigning the home button.
According to independent reports on both Business Insider and 9to5Mac (double leaks are a pattern), Apple will replace the home button with a touch sensitive surface that finishes flush with the phone. Furthermore, in order to recreate the feeling of a button, Apple will add haptic feedback similar to the Force Touch trackpad on the Macbook.
Interestingly both these reports backup two previous reports - one in April, the other just two weeks ago - which argued exactly the same thing.
As such the case for the change is building and it also makes perfect sense: it removes an obvious point of failure and we have also seen rival handsets like the OnePlus 3 and HTC 10 make this transition without gathering any negative feedback.
Furthermore getting customers used to haptic feedback on the new home ‘button’ would also pave the way for Apple to go a step beyond this with the radical iPhone 8. In May LG announced it can build a fingerprint sensor directly into its displays which would allow Apple to do away with the home button entirely.
LG's new fingerprint recognition technology reads fingerprints simply touched on the display. Image... [+]
Of course right now the company will be taking one step at a time. But given Apple came up with ”The only thing that the only thing that's changed is everything” slogan for the iPhone 6S, it is clearly aware of how a lack of visual upgrades can dissuade users from upgrading.
As such the hope will be the iPhone 7 features a boatload of clever changes like this new home button to win customers over. All of which would buy the company time before its big plans for 2017…
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