People might have probably heard of this by now, but 2017 is going to be the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone. People have been hearing about it since even before the official launch of this year's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and many have predicted that for the 10th anniversary, Apple will be planning to do something truly revolutionary and groundbreaking.
No home button for the iPhone 8
A new design is pretty obvious, considering that the present one has been in use for three generations now, with small and minor tweaks. Based on the rumors and speculations, the upcoming iPhone 8 will have an edge-to-edge screen, as well as ditch (yet again) the home button, which is arguably the most important way of interacting with an iPhone. Since this year's iPhone models have already ditched the physical button and ultimately replaced it with a haptic simulation of a button press, it only made these rumors somewhat believable. But it will still be a huge shift since the home button performs multiple functions as of today.
Here's a list of commonly-used tasks that the home button does:
1) Touch to unlock
2) Press once to exit from any app to the home screen
3) Press twice to bring up multitasking
4) Press-and-hold to bring up Siri
5) Tap twice to enable Reachability (on select iPhone models)
Incorporating Touch ID Display
A lot of no home button rumors are often coupled with Apple incorporating Touch ID directly into the screen. Indication towards this feature happen are everywhere; Qualcomm's Sense ID is said to detect fingerprints through an assortment of materials, including glass, by using ultrasonic sounds.
iPhone 8 will truly be revolutionary
To be fair, we haven't yet seen any implementations of Sense ID that have literally worked from beneath smartphone displays, and phones like the Xiaomi Mi5s or the LeEco Le Max 2 that incorporates this technology will still have dedicated areas on the body to rest your finger. With all things said, it will definitely be a welcoming addition to the iPhone 8 once Apple manages to pull it off.
