Apple to jettison home button on iPhone 8 in favor of a “function area”

If the latest report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, KGI Securities is anything to go by, the next iPhone aka the iPhone 8 will not have a home button. Instead, there will be "virtual buttons" at the bottom of the screen.

As you may already know, the Apple iPhone 8 is rumored to come with a near bezel-less display curved on both the sides. To achieve this Apple could get rid of both the home button and Touch ID believes Kuo.

He further adds that the iPhone 8 will come with a 5.8-inch OLED display. However, only 5.15-inches of the screen will be usable, and the rest called the "function area" will be reserved for the virtual buttons.

SEE ALSO: Apple regains its top position after eight quarters: Gartner

As per the Touch ID aka fingerprint scanner, Kuo believes that the next iPhone "will come with other biometric technologies that replace the current fingerprint recognition technology." However, it's not clear what "other technologies" refer to as of now.

What's interesting though is that all of this will be included in a 4.7-inch footprint akin to the current iPhone 7. Also, the iPhone 8 is speculated to pack a better battery similar to what the current Plus variants pack.

Apple has been recently granted a patent which allows the company to embed a Touch ID-enabled fingerprint scanner right into the display. It seems like Kuo's reports are going to be true, after all.

So, how's the "function area" going to look like? Touch Bar? Perhaps!

Source