Redesigned iPhone Home Button (concept)

[GubbyMan]

I've been thinking a lot about this so I decided to shrink down the iPhone 6s and "redesign" the home button.

The new home button is a pressure sensitive software button. It will work just like 3D Touch. The Touch ID sensor could be rectangular to make the sensor at least as large as the circular one.

The main advantage of this design is to make the iPhone smaller while retaining the same screen size. The new home button can probably be more durable than the physical button. What do you guys think? I hope you will appreciate my paint skills. 😀

 

[VforVelveta]

I think your drawing is off on scale if you're premise is that a square Touch ID sensor would give the same scanning area as a circular one with less height. While it would do that, we're talking about a tenth of a centimeter shorter by my rough calculations. (Current sensor is about 0.9cm across, for an area of about .64 square cm, so a square would be about 0.8 cm on each side)

So cut off the same on the top for symmetry, and we're talking a total of 0.2cm shorter.

 

[GubbyMan]

I think your drawing is off on scale if you're premise is that a square Touch ID sensor would give the same scanning area as a circular one with less height. While it would do that, we're talking about a tenth of a centimeter shorter by my rough calculations. (Current sensor is about 0.9cm across, for an area of about .64 square cm, so a square would be about 0.8 cm on each side)

So cut off the same on the top for symmetry, and we're talking a total of 0.2cm shorter.

No the square is not the same as the sensor. The square is just paint that is there to mark the center where the button is. The sensor can extend beyond the little square and it can be made rectangular to fill the whole area below the screen.

 

[duction]

no.

 

[freepomme]

It looks too Samsungy.

 

[jasie02]

It will never happen, for any iPhone look anything remotely similar as Samsung.
Not in our life.

 

[Andres Cantu]

I know we complain about the large top and bottom bezels all the time, but those are just too small. If they fell somewhere in the middle and also reduced the side bezels, then the phone would look more aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

No.

 

[arggg14]

It screams samsung. Nope.

 

[KALLT]

No, the psychical home button is one of the big reasons why I like the iPhone. I’ve had a BlackBerry Z10 that is completely touch-based and I frequently felt that I was not completely in control. The home button is very powerful and versatile and can’t be completely replaced with 3D touch or software yet. I also dislike haptic feedback, it feels cheap.

I don’t get why people complain about the upper and lower bezels so often. I find them completely acceptable and aesthetically pleasing. The mockup looks weird to me, the proportions don’t match. This is the kind of thing Apple spends a lot of thought on.

 

[ATC]

I'm all for shrinking the bezels and chin but I do like the home button. However, at least from my own experience, the mechanical home button was almost always the first thing to fail on all my iPhones.

Thankfully Apple always took care of me and replaced all my iPhones that developed non-responsive or under-responsive buttons, but I'm all for making the button non-mechanical. I just hope Apple figures out a way to making the home button experience not too alien.

 

[Pakaku]

The first use for the Home Button is to have a physical button you can press, which does not rely on special software to function. Press it and return to the home screen, or hold it with the sleep button held to hard-restart the phone. That could be easily replaced by a new button on the side, maybe move the Home and Sleep buttons to the same 'height' on opposite sides of the phone, like the old Apple Mice had side buttons you could squeeze. But having buttons on the sides with no real indication of which does what can be confusing... You "know" the sleep button is on the top, the volume buttons are on one side, the "vibrate" switch isn't a button, and the home button is on the face of the phone.

Bezels can be imitated through software just fine. They did it with iPads, they can do it with iPhones. And you don't have to worry about bezels when the phone isn't in a "powered" state.

That leaves Touch ID, which I have no idea what they would or could do. Maybe they could figure out how to sense a fingerprint "through" a touch-screen, and bring up a virtual Touch ID ring on the screen.

But there is also the problem with aesthetics, and the home button is extremely iconic. But so was the rainbow Apple logo...

 

[Skika]

So... much smaller battery?

 

[Macintoshrumors]

well this question aged well. Its 2017 and there really is not a need for a home button with face id.

 

[urkel]

ugh. i got suckered into an old thread.