If Apple released a phone without smaller top and bottom bezels they would be killed in the media and people would be talking about how some no name Chinese brand can release a phone with smaller bezels but Apple can't. I can already see the posts here that Tim needs to be fired and Apple is doomed and I'm getting a Samsung.
For me personally if they move Touch ID to the back of the phone I'll keep my iPhone 7 and hope it was only temporary placement.
Temporary in the grand scheme of things, but still a most definitive deal for anyone who bought it, and a glaring inconsistency in their line-up. Kind of like the USB-only 12'' Retina MacBook (which still doesn't have a Thunderbolt 3 port), the 5K iMac (which still doesn't support Target Display Mode because the standalone [mini-]DisplayPort spec it uses still doesn't have enough bandwidth for that), the first-generation unibody MacBook (that obviously should've began its life as a Pro model and featured a FW800 port, removable battery be damned, duh), or even the two-port 2016 13'' MacBook Pro (I'm willing to bet that if they will come up with a 15'' F-keys model, they are probably coming up with a 13'' F-keys model with four ports as well, and soon), just to name a few oddities in Apple's long history of oddities, road Apples and lemons.
But all those oddities notwithstanding, they managed to keep the iPhone (and iPad!) line very cohesive throughout the years. And much like Apple stood their ground and refrained from putting out models with larger screens (and other different kinds of tech like, say, Bluetooth earphones) for quite a while until they got it right, I'd rather see them wait another year than going after the latest, greatest, newfangled thing just because “Samsung did it first” (what if Samsung got it wrong and came up with an overall uglier, less polished device regardless of its superior tech? Sure, that near bezel-less scree on the S8 looks very cool, but I already played with it for a while and I felt that its curved edges are stupid and useless as hell, the case looks ugly as sin – yes, it does… even though it's probably made out of metal, its finish feels warm to the touch and plasticky, its curves don't feel right, and all the buttons and cutouts are, as usual per Samsung's “design language”, grossly misaligned and badly proportioned – and the fingerprint reader on the back is, to put it nicely, unfriendly; the whole thing feels wrong, as if it wasn't really designed but instead put together haphazardly).
Give me an internally-upgraded iPhone 7S (or even an upgraded iPhone 5/5S/SE-sized device, with a redesigned exterior case, upgraded internals and 3D Touch/Taptic Engine) over this prototype (or a Samsung/Android monstrosity) any time of the day. For all of Apple's weird and debatable design decisions (antenna lines, I'm looking at you), they surely felt much more thought-out than even the “prettiest” of Samsung (or even, say, Microsoft, which has been doing interesting stuff lately) devices, and this would really mark a departure from the Apple of old. The Apple that wasn't afraid of selling you the same Mac, the same iPod and the same iPhone design for years on end, because it just worked right. Hence me referring to this as a “Mac Pro moment”, something they are apparently doing just to prove they can “innovate”.
