We’re expecting Apple to announce the iPhone 8 on their September 12th event, and in the past weeks we’ve seen leaks pop up all over the internet.
The rumours suggest some pretty big changes for the iPhone 8. Two of those are the removal of the Home/Touch ID button and also an OLED bezel-less display with a small notch at the top to house the front-facing camera along with some other sensors. The screen continues to run around the sides of the notch as seen in the image below.
If these changes turn out to be correct, then iOS11 will also have to adapt to work with the new setup. How exactly will this happen, well, Bloomberg have released a report on exactly how they think it could be done.
(iOS 11 app on iPhone 8 concept by @stroughtonsmith)
From the images we can see that the clock will sit to the left of the notch, whilst the WiFi, signal strength and battery icons will sit to the right. To me this all seems perfectly reasonable and like a good use of the extra space created to the side of the notch.
With the removal of the of the Home/Touch ID button, things get a little more complicated. The button is currently used for many things including returning to the home screen, activating the app switcher and authenticating Apple Pay payments.
According to the Bloomberg report these may be achieved by using different swipes up from the bottom of the screen. When the device is locked, a small strip called “software bar” will act as a handle allowing users to swipe upwards to unlock the device. When unlocked, a similar swipe will return the user to the home screen, whilst a quicker, shorter swipe would activate the app switcher.
If this is the way that Apple has decided to implement the functions without the use of a button then it will be a huge change for people and one which may take a while to get used to.
If the 12th September is the date that Apple do decide to announce the new iPhone line up then we’ve not long to wait until we have all of the official details. Stay tuned over the next week to find out more!