Overall these rumors sound very plausible as Apple isn‘t gonna leave what is possibly their most popular iPhone price range devoid of new products. However, what I don‘t understand at all is the supposed lack of wireless charging and even more so Force Touch.
Both of these features are an integral part of the iPhone 8/8+ line which the 6.1“ iPhone would replace price-wise, and Force Touch has been around since the iPhone 6s in 2015, it‘s considered a standard iPhone feature at that point and incredibly useful. Similarly the absence of wireless charging would be very strange when it‘s a standard feature on the entire 2017 iPhone lineup; even the much cheaper rumored iPhone SE 2 is supposedly coming with with wireless charging, so why leave it out on their new mid-tier model? It would probably also be a hard hit on the sales of the AirPower mat as it would mean that all those people buying the new phone would have no interest in it. Hell, I‘d imagine everyone who will buy an AirPower mat for his iPhone 8/8+ and then make the jump to the 6.1“ model later this/early next year is going to be sorely disappointed about not being able to use it.
Maybe these details are wrong and we‘re getting these two features, or maybe there are some puzzle pieces of the new phone that we don‘t know yet and that would make the absence of these features more reasonable (like a lower-than-expected price, for example, although I frankly doubt that). But right now the supposed absence of these features just doesn‘t make much sense to me, and I‘d imagine it would be a deal-breaker to many people. I know it would be to me (at least the lack of Force Touch).
