Goodbye, home button: iPhone 8 may be more radical than thought
You might be controlling the upcoming flagship iPhone in a whole new way.
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The iPhone's home button has been rumored to be on the design chopping block for a while, but it now seems it might go beyond just removing it.
To make room for and take full advantage of the iPhone 8's expected near top-to-bottom display, not only will the home button no longer physically exist, there is some reason to believe that it won't exist in a virtual form, either, according to images viewed by Bloomberg News and people familiar with the next flagship iPhone.
Instead of pressing or tapping a home button to return to a main screen or access open apps, those actions will be done with multitouch gestures, Bloomberg reports.
And instead of using the home button for Apple Pay, there will be an IR camera for facial recognition. While phones such as Samsung's Galaxy S8 switched to an onscreen home button, the iPhone 8 would be the first smartphone to do away with it entirely.
Bloomberg's report matches up with other design and feature rumors for the next iPhone, which is expected to be announced on Sept. 12 and cost $1,000 in the US.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.