“It is not a tip but true” that the iPhones coming out this year will lack a home button, a new report says. We’ll point out that nothing is “true” until Apple unveils the iPhone 8 later this year, but this new report appears to reaffirm one of the most exciting iPhone 8 rumors we’ve seen so far.
For starters, it doesn’t come from Twitter leakers with shady sources. It comes from Digitimes, which… well… also sometimes has shady sources. But this time around Digitimes is only quoting a report from Chinese language Economic Daily News, which has a much better track record.
This new report cites sources from within TSMC, the chipmaker in charge of mass producing the A11 chips that go into the iPhone 8 and iPhone 7s. They say that during the TSMC 2017 NA Technology Symposium, a number of design changes and new applications of the upcoming iPhone 8 were discussed privately.
Apple will apparently use a fingerprint sensor embedded in the screen to enable authentication. That means there’s not going to be a Touch ID sensor present on a home button like the current iPhones have. More importantly, it means the scanner hasn’t been relocated to the back of the phone.
The iPhones will also apparently feature invisible infrared image sensors “to enhance the functionality of high-pixel camera and to enable AR applications.” The report is unclear about the infrared sensors though, and seems to imply that both front- and rear-facing cameras will have them.
Additionally, the post notes that the aspect ratio of the new iPhone 8 will be adjusted to 18.5:9 instead of 16:9, which is in line with what a previous report claimed. It also matches the Galaxy S8’s aspect ratio exactly. Digitimes makes it sound like all iPhones launching this year will lack a home button, but that’s probably not going to be the case. The iPhone 7s is expected to resemble the iPhone 7 and retain the home button.
