We’re a week away from seeing the unveiling of the next-generation LG G6 and about a month away from watching Samsung take the wraps off its hotly anticipated new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ flagship phones. So naturally, Apple’s upcoming new iPhone 8 is the talk of the town.
There is plenty of excitement surrounding LG and Samsung’s upcoming new Android handsets, but a new iPhone always seems to trump rival phones when it comes to buzz and hype, even when we’re still seven months away from seeing Apple announce its new iPhone 8. Here’s a comparison of global search traffic on Google for the three phones, which is obviously always a good indication of consumer interest levels.
If you count yourself among the millions of Apple fans anxiously awaiting the company’s next-generation flagship phone, nothing can speed up time and make September come any sooner. It may come as some consolation, however, to know that the world’s top Apple insider has just issued a fresh new report that reveals yet another exciting new feature coming to the iPhone 8.
Apple’s next-generation iPhone 8 is still many months away from becoming a reality, but as is always the case each year, plenty of information has already leaked from reliable sources. We know the phone will feature a brand new design that does away with last year’s aluminum housing in favor of a stainless steel chassis sandwiched by a glass face and glass back. We know the phone will feature a new OLED display that occupies much more of the phone’s face, and we know the home button is following the 3.5mm headphone jack and being eliminated from the device. The Touch ID fingerprint sensor will reportedly be embedded into the display itself, and the phone may also have exciting new advanced facial recognition features that add another layer of security.
About those facial recognition features…
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is the world’s most accurate Apple insider, and he issued a new note to clients on Tuesday morning. In it, Kuo dug a big deeper into the hardware that will seemingly enable the new advanced facial recognition features on the iPhone 8. In fact, according to Kuo’s new note, facial recognition and security features are just the tip of the iceberg.
Kuo reports that the iPhone 8 will feature a “revolutionary” new front-facing camera and infrared sensor module that scans the 3D environment in front of it. The new functionality is apparently based on technology Apple gained when it acquired Israeli firm PrimeSense, which is the same team behind Microsoft’s Kinect sensor.
According to this new report, Apple’s front-facing 3D scanner will be able to take 3D selfies, which is impressive in itself. But beyond that, Kuo notes a nifty new feature that could literally be a game-changer: As noted by 9to5Mac, this new feature will apparently be used in next-generation mobile games to actually place the player’s 3D head on a video game character’s body.
Little else is known about Apple’s upcoming new 3D camera on the iPhone 8, but the possibilities are practically endless when it comes to augmented reality and inserting advanced 3D scans of physical objects into the virtual world on the phone.
