Earlier on Monday, we told you about a new rumor that started cropping up suggesting that Apple has plans to dump the iPhone’s iconic phycial home button in the future in favor of a virtual home button. This move would free up more space for the device’s display, although it would also be a major change from how people in the past have used the iPhone. One of AppleInsider’s sources claims that the company really is working on a radical redesign of the iPhone but adds that we shouldn’t expect to see it before 2017 at the earliest.
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AppleInsider’s source claims that removing the home button is a long-term goal for Apple but cautions that it might never come to pass. Among other things, Apple will need to figure out how it wants to implement its Touch ID fingerprint scanning system on future iPhones without embedding it into a physical button.
As AppleInsider also points out, removing the home button is risky for Apple because iPhone users have gotten so used to having it on their devices that removing it could cause some user experience issues similar to the ones Windows 8 users experienced when Microsoft removed the Start menu.
That said, it sounds like we’re still years away from having to worry about this at all. Nonetheless, AppleInsider’s report is worth reading and can be found here.
