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Apple Looking to Eliminate Home Button on iOS Devices, Integrate Touch and Display Driver Chips?
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Certainly, Apple desperately need to reduce the length of the iPhone. It's way too long. And I do wish they'd bring the iPad's gestures to the iPhone. It's tiresome not having them.
Personally I would miss both the bezel and the home button if they were eliminated. The bezel means you can hold it without obscuring much of the screen. Similarly, the Home Button means you are not obscuring the screen when you use it for any of its functions. You also need somewhere to put the front-facing camera.
I suppose the button's functionality could be moved to the back of the device or something (I'd say the side but there is very little side left to use!).
I suppose the button's functionality could be moved to the back of the device or something (I'd say the side but there is very little side left to use!).
I don't know, you should probably try yahoo answers those people always have something to say
The galaxy series of phones have hardware buttons. What you are talking about is capacitive hardware buttons. Software buttons are the ones that are on the screen (aka almost all current Android phones besides Samsung and LG).
Apple's probably going to use Force Touch for purpose of home button.. Or at least use it for something like how push-display mechanism of the old iRiver MP3 Clix.
That should help people from getting sore thumb trying to reach bottom of the screen to click home button since you can click anywhere.
That should help people from getting sore thumb trying to reach bottom of the screen to click home button since you can click anywhere.
Force Touch wouldn't be a software button. They could implement this right now if it weren't for the fingerprint sensor, which might take a little longer.
That's a very poor comparison. The Force Touch trackpad looks, works, and feels exactly like a trackpad with a mechanical clicking function. It has no drawbacks.
Concerns over the possible loss of the iPhone's physical home button have nothing to do with the replacement of its mechanical clicking function with a Force Touch haptic simulation. It's all about being able to see or feel the home button's location, which provides multiple benefits.
Food for thought, what would prevent a full screen Force Touch home button replacement from unintentionally waking your phone while it's in your pocket?
I was just stating that if Apple was going to take that route they can make the whole screen a button by force touching in a certain location. It won't wake up your phone since the touch digitizer only responds to skin contact since the original iPhone.
Keep the home button
It is more resistnt to crashes and it gives one a tactile means of orienting the phone.
It is more resistnt to crashes and it gives one a tactile means of orienting the phone.
A physical home button is our only line of defense against frozen apps and an unresponsive touch screen.
I'm aure Apple can bake that same functionality into some combo of the sleep button or volume rockers, or something completely new and different, instead.
The difference here is that this could use force touch, so it wouldn't be easy to accidentally "press" the button simply by brushing your hand against it.
Your point, unless badly communicated, seemed to be that we shouldn't necessarily believe this rumor. If there's was more depth to it than that, do please edjumacate us.
For me the home button represents simplicity itself. It does one thing very well, it gets you out and back home. To remove it would require screen estate to be put over to on screen buttons like google, and we all know that having the bottom full of buttons is in efficient and very ugly.
I even think the power and the up and down volume keys on the iPhone 6 and plus are in the wrong place. To press them you can end up pressing both, adding a button on the side or on screen to get rid of a rather useful chin and forehead on the next device is insanity.
What might work is force touch on an area near the bottom of the screen but feels like the most unintuitive method. Getting rid of the power key all together would be nice though as it serves zero purpose apart from turning off the screen, double tap to unlock instead of that could work but turning off the screen would need a new gesture that was just as quick.
I would love to see no ports or wires but needing a wireless dock is just not good, especially charging in the car etc where buying multiple cables and docks would be very awkward indeed. The cable is only for power now and really not used for data anymore. Usb C would be cool but i feel like lightning is better made but sadly pretty slow and not very compatible with external devices.
There is still tonnes of new ways to push the iPhone and mobiles in general forward, i mean i;m no selfie whore but a better front camera, flash and wide angle would be cool. Also a wide angle option for video on the iPhone would really be nice, i don't see the point of zoomed in video on the iPhone and is a bit of a pet peeve. Rant over.
I even think the power and the up and down volume keys on the iPhone 6 and plus are in the wrong place. To press them you can end up pressing both, adding a button on the side or on screen to get rid of a rather useful chin and forehead on the next device is insanity.
What might work is force touch on an area near the bottom of the screen but feels like the most unintuitive method. Getting rid of the power key all together would be nice though as it serves zero purpose apart from turning off the screen, double tap to unlock instead of that could work but turning off the screen would need a new gesture that was just as quick.
I would love to see no ports or wires but needing a wireless dock is just not good, especially charging in the car etc where buying multiple cables and docks would be very awkward indeed. The cable is only for power now and really not used for data anymore. Usb C would be cool but i feel like lightning is better made but sadly pretty slow and not very compatible with external devices.
There is still tonnes of new ways to push the iPhone and mobiles in general forward, i mean i;m no selfie whore but a better front camera, flash and wide angle would be cool. Also a wide angle option for video on the iPhone would really be nice, i don't see the point of zoomed in video on the iPhone and is a bit of a pet peeve. Rant over.
I've been calling this for years. Eventually the bezel is going to disappear. There's just no way around it. You can't keep simplifying things and making them smaller and thinner without removing it. It's an inevitability. I don't think the bezel will completely disappear with the iPhone 7, but we may see the home button disappear first with reduced top and bottom bezels to make the phone shorter. Then use Force Touch as a home button.
Apple could do two things (that I can see, anyway) to accomplish this:
With the reduced bezels we can have bigger displays in our devices without much change to their physical size. Personally I'd love to see the 4.7" iPhone reintroduced at 5" with reduced bezels. I think overall it would still be shorter than the 4.7" model and maybe a touch wider. Then reintroduce the 4" iPhone with reduced bezels as an iPhone 7 Mini (it would be quite a bit smaller than the 5S because it would be like the 5S without the top and bottom bezel) and push the iPhone 7 Plus up to 6" with reduced bezels, so it's only a touch bigger than the 6 Plus. The line would be like this: 4", 5", 6". Simple. Price it at $199, $249, $299 with sizes of 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. Use a Liquid Metal unibody enclosure and call it a day.
Taking it even further, they might even be able to use inductive charging to get rid of the Lightning Port, and ship it with some bluetooth headphones to get rid of the headphone jack—but I'm not sure if we're quite ready for that yet. Furthermore Lightning also has some other interesting uses like for video out, but AirPlay is also a thing so who knows. I feel like there would still need to be some kind of port for running diagnostics, much like the Apple Watch has. Also there are other concerns like the earpiece, but I've seen glass panes used as speakers before. Not sure if they can pull that off at this point. Eventually iPhones are just going to be thin slabs with a display and not much else so it will be interesting to see how they overcome the different design and engineering problems to get us there. Probably won't be until the iPhone 8 or even later that things are simplified that much, however.
Apple could do two things (that I can see, anyway) to accomplish this:
- Force Touch has three levels of "click" to it: Normal taps (current standard), medium presses, and hard presses. Hard taps would take you back to the home screen, while medium presses would be used for context-sensitive actions within built-in and third-party apps.
- Force Touch works how it does on the Apple Watch, but has special zones. The "bottom" of the phone is off limits for developers, and force pressing anywhere near the bottom of the screen will take you home. In this case "bottom" is determined by the current orientation of the phone, as determined by the accelerometer.
With the reduced bezels we can have bigger displays in our devices without much change to their physical size. Personally I'd love to see the 4.7" iPhone reintroduced at 5" with reduced bezels. I think overall it would still be shorter than the 4.7" model and maybe a touch wider. Then reintroduce the 4" iPhone with reduced bezels as an iPhone 7 Mini (it would be quite a bit smaller than the 5S because it would be like the 5S without the top and bottom bezel) and push the iPhone 7 Plus up to 6" with reduced bezels, so it's only a touch bigger than the 6 Plus. The line would be like this: 4", 5", 6". Simple. Price it at $199, $249, $299 with sizes of 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. Use a Liquid Metal unibody enclosure and call it a day.
Taking it even further, they might even be able to use inductive charging to get rid of the Lightning Port, and ship it with some bluetooth headphones to get rid of the headphone jack—but I'm not sure if we're quite ready for that yet. Furthermore Lightning also has some other interesting uses like for video out, but AirPlay is also a thing so who knows. I feel like there would still need to be some kind of port for running diagnostics, much like the Apple Watch has. Also there are other concerns like the earpiece, but I've seen glass panes used as speakers before. Not sure if they can pull that off at this point. Eventually iPhones are just going to be thin slabs with a display and not much else so it will be interesting to see how they overcome the different design and engineering problems to get us there. Probably won't be until the iPhone 8 or even later that things are simplified that much, however.
See you back here in a couple years cursing the ghost of Jobs and bemoaning lack of hardware buttons. It'll be a great thread.
My point which you obviously are STILL not getting is not that one shouldn't believe a rumor on a rumor site, (DUH) but WHO it is that is reporting the rumor, (in this case Digitimes) which I clearly bolded and asterisked the "WHO".
Let's move on, shall we?
The home button is not just for Touch ID so being able to move the Touch ID function to the screen does not remove the need for the home button. It was there before Touch ID existed.
I agree with those who don't want to lose the one physical home button. I found it to be 1000x more functional/convenient/comforting than Android's no buttons/soft buttons. I think it far outweighs the downside, which is that it makes the iPhone awkwardly tall because of the bezels. This by the way wouldn't have been a problem if they had stuck to the original 3:2 aspect ratio. (I still think the 4s was the closest to perfect form factor ever for a smartphone.)
And I also think double clicking the home button then tapping on previous app is too cumbersome for something you need to do as often as switching between two apps. I think double clicking home button to overview recent apps is fine, but for immediate switching to a previous app, there should be a fast gesture, like swipe up from bottom then left/right for example.
I agree with those who don't want to lose the one physical home button. I found it to be 1000x more functional/convenient/comforting than Android's no buttons/soft buttons. I think it far outweighs the downside, which is that it makes the iPhone awkwardly tall because of the bezels. This by the way wouldn't have been a problem if they had stuck to the original 3:2 aspect ratio. (I still think the 4s was the closest to perfect form factor ever for a smartphone.)
And I also think double clicking the home button then tapping on previous app is too cumbersome for something you need to do as often as switching between two apps. I think double clicking home button to overview recent apps is fine, but for immediate switching to a previous app, there should be a fast gesture, like swipe up from bottom then left/right for example.