Apple is reportedly planning to release not one, not two, but three new iPhone models simultaneously ahead of the holidays this year. The company upped its fall iPhone count for the first time in 2014 when it released the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and it followed suit in 2015 with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, then again last year with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. Rumors now suggest that the iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus will both be released this coming year as expected, but a third new model will debut as well.
It might be called the iPhone 8, iPhone X or something else, but whatever Apple chooses to call it, this will be the iPhone that garners the most attention in 2017 thanks to a bold redesign and a number of exciting new features. Now, yet another new feature may have been revealed in a report on Friday.
If all the reports we’ve seen so far from trusted sources pan out like they have in previous years, Apple’s new tenth anniversary iPhone is shaping up to be the most exciting new smartphone the world has ever seen. The same might be said of every new iPhone that launches each year considering how many handsets Apple sells, but this year we’re in for something special.
Reports from sources with very good track records suggest that the iPhone 8 will be redesigned from the ground up. Apple will seemingly do away with the aluminum housing from the iPhones 6, 6s and 7, and will move to a design that features glass on the front and back with a stainless steel mid-section. The home button will be removed for the first time ever on an iPhone, and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner will reportedly be embedded underneath the new OLED display, which is expected to take up much more of the phone’s face than Apple’s LCD screens have in previous years.
Now, it also looks like the security offered by Touch ID will be further enhanced by the addition of an iris scanner.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 was the first widely available flagship phone to ship with an integrated iris scanner, but the phone wasn’t widely available for very long; Samsung had to recall the device due to faulty batteries that caused many Note 7 phones to spontaneously catch fire. The South Korean electronics giant is expected to include its new iris scanner in the upcoming Galaxy S8 as well, and now Digitimes reports that Apple will add an iris scanner to the iPhone 8 this fall.
It is currently unclear how Apple plans to utilize the iris scanner in the iPhone 8, if this new report is in fact accurate. Digitimes often gets very early info from its supply chain sources, and there’s plenty of time for plans to change between now and September. On the Galaxy Note 7, the iris scanner was used to unlock the phone and to allow access to a special secure folder, but its functionality wasn’t extended to cover other security features such as mobile payment authentication.
