“Apple Inc. plans to transform the way people use its next high-end iPhone by eliminating the concept of a home button and making other adjustments to a flagship device that’s becoming almost all screen, according to images of the new device viewed by Bloomberg News and people familiar with the gadget.,” Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg. “The home button is the key to the iPhone and the design hasn’t changed much since it launched in 2007.”
“In the new, high-end iPhone, Apple also plans a taller screen with rounded corners, a cutout at the top of the display for the camera and sensors, and new antenna locations, the images show,” Gurman reports. “Across the bottom of the screen there’s a thin, software bar in lieu of the home button. A user can drag it up to the middle of the screen to open the phone. When inside an app, a similar gesture starts multitasking. From here, users can continue to flick upwards to close the app and go back to the home screen. An animation in testing sucks the app back into its icon. The multitasking interface has been redesigned to appear like a series of standalone cards that can be swiped through, versus the stack of cards on current iPhones, the images show.”
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“The new model’s overall size will be similar to that of the iPhone 7, but it will include an OLED screen that is slightly larger than the one on the iPhone 7 Plus (5.5-inches),” Gurman reports. “The new screen is rounded on the corners, while current iPhone screens have square corners… The screen is also noticeably taller than the iPhone 7 Plus’s screen, meaning it could show more of a web page or additional text messages, the people said. The phone will still have six vertical rows of apps, showing 24 icons on each page, excluding the dock, a grey bar at the bottom that houses commonly used apps. The dock is redesigned with a new interface similar to the one on the iPad version of iOS 11, the images show.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: R.I.P., Home button! We’re going to have some relearning to do soon, but we can’t wait to have displays larger than our iPhone 7 Plus units in iPhone 7-sized devices!
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s leaked firmware suggests ‘iPhone 8’ with split status bar, no Touch ID under display, and function area – August 1, 2017
iPhone 8 concept shows how cool a ‘Function Area’ could be – May 4, 2017
Ming-Chi Kuo: 5.8-inch iPhone 8 to offer 5.15-inch usable screen space with new ‘function area’ – February 16, 2017
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like the Home button.
Even if the physical home button goes away, a virtual home button should be just as useful especially if it only shows up as you put your finger over that area. Farewell to the chin bezel on the high-end iPhone and the chin bezel will likely disappear on the other iPhones in 2018.
Please let me keep the form factor of my humble but excellent iPhone 5SE.
from a person with good vision … I need the billboard size please.
No bitching from MDN that the wings at the top won’t be blacked out?
I think MDN will be pleasantly apprised… 😉
So back to HyperCard?