iOS 11 Dock and Gesture Controls to Replace 'iPhone 8' Home Button Entirely

[BruceEBonus]

Hands up who can remember when Apple championed ergonomics and ease of use over their unnecessarily complicated competition? Let's hope this isn't true. Or it could be one step backwards too far this time. Not everybody is a geek ... people who bought the iphone were anything but. Apple used to pride themselves in being different to their rivals. Now the vision is dissipating and complexity is being introduced to distract from innovation. Or rather... the lack of it.

 

[nieks]

I’m really going to struggle with this. For nine years I’ve used the home button to wake my phone, my power button is very rarely used. It’s going to be a hard habit to break.

I've heard iPhone8 will probably gain 'tap to wake'. And on a side note: when picking up the phone, it already automatically wakes the screen.

 

[iamgalt]

So many people are hating on the cutout at the top for the camera, earpiece, etc. I actually kind of like it (although, not in white). It gives the phone a little character, while still being pretty minimal. I would much rather have that than for the iPhone to go in the direction of the Galaxy Note 8. There's a boring looking phone with no character.

As far as not having a physical home button, that's something I'll have to go to an apple store and try out in person before I can make any kind of a decision on it. However, I think like most things, once a person gets used to it, they won't really mind it; but I guess only time will tell.

 

[Sirious]

Makes sense. The dock feature from the iPad should go to the iPhone 8. More importantly I want the flick keyboard from the iPad.

What 'flick keyboard'?

 

[recoil80]

Multitasking on the iPhone? I think a lot of people will love that including me, I can see that only being for the 5.5" 7s and the iPhone 8 with 5.8" display. Also I wonder if this is related to Apple having patents recently and as far back as a yer or so for the Apple Pencil working with an iPhone? It would certainly be very interesting and possibly a Note killer.

While drag&drop and multitasking would work better on the iPad thanks to the bigger screen I wouldn't say no to having some sort of multitasking on the iPhone as well.
And I like some of the use case of the pen in Samsung Note, so I wouldn't say no to the Apple pencil on the iPhone as well, although I'm not craving for it

 

[Mark B16]

So the iPhone will basically work the same way as WebOS did originally nearly 9 years ago
WebOs was well ahead of it's time:

 

[the future]

EMBRACE THE NOTCH

 

[iPhysicist]

Shut up and give me money.

 

[mctrials23]

Hands up who can remember when Apple championed ergonomics and ease of use over their unnecessarily complicated competition? Let's hope this isn't true. Or it could be one step backwards too far this time.

Apple have always loved gestures and intuitive interface over cluttering the UI with button/ This is just the logical next step. The home button was the best thing to use for app switcher/home so giving people lots of alternatives to do the same is very un-apple. Getting rid of the home button means that you just have to learn a very simple new way of doing it.

The only thing that I wonder about is siri. Very few people like using 'hey siri" as far as I can tell so I wonder how apple will allow us to active it without the home button.

They will replace the home button with an always on display and a swipe up to unlock or something like that, pressing the home button to get to the home screen would be replaced with a gesture of some sort but I wonder how siri will be triggered. Should be exciting to see how Apple handles all this.

 

[Aleh]

Brb using imagination since no pics

(I'm glad they're not gonna use a virtual home button like Android does, never made sense to me)

 

[639051]

It makes more sense, a virtual home button would always be clunky unless the entire bottom bezel became the home button with 3D Touch.

It’s a shame they’d be losing the magic of a virtual button with the Taptic Engine, and we’ll have to see how it is but this method doesn’t seem as instant and intuitive (possibly as clunky as a virtual button).

The virtual home button on the Galaxy S8 I am testing out right now actually works really well. It rarely shows up but it always there, you just hard press it and it takes you home.

 

[jclardy]

I don't know a lot about the possibilities of OLED when it comes to use of energy, but what if it displays white to blend in with the white front? Like an always-on feature mentioned a couple weeks ago?

The reason black looks good on OLED screens is because the pixel is actually completely turned off, as in it generates no light. White on OLED is the complete opposite.

I figured the home button stuff would be similar to the dock on the iPad in iOS 11, but not sure how I feel about it in practice. Swiping up from the bottom to above the midpoint of the screen seems like a pretty excessive gesture compared to pressing the home button (for going back to the home screen.) But i'll trust that Apple has something figured out.

 

[recoil80]

I've heard iPhone8 will probably gain 'tap to wake'. And on a side note: when picking up the phone, it already automatically wakes the screen.

Even Apple Watch wakes up when you raise the wrist, but you also have the tap to wake so you don't need to move the arm in order to activate the screen.
iPhone will have tap to wake for a similar reason. You may have your iPhone laying on the table and use tap to wake to quickly look at a notification on the screen. If, as rumoured, the face detection will work at a wide angle you'll be able to tap on the screen, being recognised by the phone and use it

 

[stanman64]

I'm really starting to like the idea of a split status bar. Having just the time on the left hand side, and then battery/WiFi/Cellular on the right side sounds great. Airplane Mode icon would still take over Cellular/Wifi when toggled.

Status icons for Orientation Lock, Do Not Disturb, and Night Shift can all be easily viewed in the Control Center. Although it's nice, they don't necessarily need their own spot in the the status bar.

Other things, like the Location Services Indicator and Connected Bluetooth could show in an expanded status bar (revealed with a tap or swipe), in Notification Center, or be moved to Control Center.

All in all, I'm getting excited to see what Apple has cooked up.

 

[Delgibbons]

I don't know a lot about the possibilities of OLED when it comes to use of energy, but what if it displays white to blend in with the white front? Like an always-on feature mentioned a couple weeks ago?

The main benefit of OLED is that black is basically off. On my s7 edge I have a black wallpaper, and the always on display is dim enough so I can constantly have notifications, clock and a thumbnail photo on screen without much of a battery penalty.

White burns energy on the other hand...

 

[twolf2919]

I’m really going to struggle with this. For nine years I’ve used the home button to wake my phone, my power button is very rarely used. It’s going to be a hard habit to break.

It won't be so hard when you don't have the button But seriously, I share your pain.

Lately, though, the home button has become a bit of an annoyance anyway - my wife and I have gotten into the habit of occasionally using the phone when we can't sleep. Both of us are light sleepers and that darn button click (we still have an iPhone 6 with its completely physical home button) has a tendency to wake the other person up! I sure hope they made the power button quieter (but even if they don't - that's just one click versus one every time you want to get back to the home screen).

 

[Roller]

Considering how close we are to the announcement, it seems to me that there's more speculation about hardware and software than I recall for previous iPhone releases. I may or may not like the iPhone 8 on September 12, but the uncertainty is sort of fun.

 

[The Cappy]

The problem with gestures is that they not intuitive for many people. I use them all the time. But my parents? When they’re baffled by their iOS device, there’s always that one button they can hit. Now, when they’re stuck, the solution will be to swipe a finger up from the bottom. And why are they supposed to think of that? There’s no cue that this is an available action. You have to already know about it.

 

[nieks]

The main benefit of OLED is that black is basically off. On my s7 edge I have a black wallpaper, and the always on display is dim enough so I can constantly have notifications, clock and a thumbnail photo on screen without much of a battery penalty.

White burns energy on the other hand...

Indeed. The advantage of OLED is that black is not basically off, it's just that complete black pixels don't use energy at all. White is completely on. So you can't use white to let it blend in with a white bezel/notch (which is why a white bezel probably won't happen).

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

Hands up who can remember when Apple championed ergonomics and ease of use over their unnecessarily complicated competition? Let's hope this isn't true. Or it could be one step backwards too far this time. Not everybody is a geek ... people who bought the iphone were anything but. Apple used to pride themselves in being different to their rivals. Now the vision is dissipating and complexity is being introduced to distract from innovation. Or rather... the lack of it.

Apple have always loved gestures and intuitive interface over cluttering the UI with button/ This is just the logical next step. The home button was the best thing to use for app switcher/home so giving people lots of alternatives to do the same is very un-apple. Getting rid of the home button means that you just have to learn a very simple new way of doing it.

The only thing that I wonder about is siri. Very few people like using 'hey siri" as far as I can tell so I wonder how apple will allow us to active it without the home button.

They will replace the home button with an always on display and a swipe up to unlock or something like that, pressing the home button to get to the home screen would be replaced with a gesture of some sort but I wonder how siri will be triggered. Should be exciting to see how Apple handles all this.

I dunno, I use the swipe gestures pretty constantly. More so on my big phones (6 Plus, 6S Plus, 7 Plus), but even on my SE. I have run into issues getting Control Center to appear at times, but I've found that is due to whichever case I was using at the time.

IMO, I still would have liked a virtual home button with Taptic backup, but this could end up being more natural.

 

[McTool]

What 'flick keyboard'?

On the iPad you have now a flick keyboard and new layout.
Which I personally don't like. I keep looking for things.

 

[djlythium]

So the new app switcher will work as shown in this video :-

https://mobile.twitter.com/_inside/status/899778395776499713/video/1
___________________
Edit :- According to this Article The new iPhone dock will be similar to the dock feature on iOS 11 for iPad. The rounded dock will blend perfectly with rounded edges
View attachment 715087
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ans-to-change-the-way-you-use-the-next-iphone

I like that swipe-up.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Mark Gurman is spot on.

 

[Ballis]

Im guessing Apple knows what they are doing when it comes to software and their OS so Im not worried. But Im still not getting this phone unless they have made the camera flush again. If not, Ill just stick with the SE-

 

[RichTF]

Hands up who can remember when Apple championed ergonomics and ease of use over their unnecessarily complicated competition? Let's hope this isn't true. Or it could be one step backwards too far this time. Not everybody is a geek ... people who bought the iphone were anything but. Apple used to pride themselves in being different to their rivals. Now the vision is dissipating and complexity is being introduced to distract from innovation. Or rather... the lack of it.

Maybe. But then 10 years ago hardly anyone (except geeks) used touch screens at all. Now pretty much all non-geeks can use a touch screen without thinking about it (thanks to the lead set by the original iPhone).

I'm a bit nervous about the iPhone 8, Apple are really pushing us out of our comfort zones it seems. But then I remember all of the mock-ups of the original iPhone that had a "virtual click-wheel" as the main UI — because we were all used to Apple's hugely successful iPods and expected more of the same. Completely removing the home button seems like a similarly ballsy move, but one that could — I hope — prove equally forward-thinking and natural once we have it in our hands.