Apple’s iPhone 6S may not have a physical home button

Remember how everyone, us included, cribbed about Apple’s obsession with symmetry? Well, the company is working on it. A new report suggests that the next iPhone won’t have a physical home buttons. To put it another way, the next iPhone may not have the source of all of Apple’s symmetry woes. Ok, that might be a stretch, since the numbers show that the iPhone 6’s size didn’t quite affect its sales, but still, it was bigger than it needed to be, while the 6 Plus was gigantic.

According to a Digitimes report, Apple is working on integrating the touch and display driver into a single chip. The publication cited sources from Taiwan’s IC design industry, who said that the technology would be fitted into future iPhones that will be ultra-thin, ultra-narrow, and would eliminate the physical home button completely. A concept design (top) of this has been floating around for a while, but it’s neither officially from Apple, nor attached to the Digitimes report.

The removal of the physical home button would mean Apple’s Touch ID sensor mechanism would now be accessible through the phone’s display. The front of the phone, as the concept image shows, could be all glass, while a touch button shows up for locking and unlocking the device.

Thought the iPhone 6 was bigger than it needed to be? Well, the iPhone 6S (or perhaps iPhone 7) will definitely be the right size. In fact, the move would make all the sense for Apple, which has historically stuck to a sub-5 inch screen size. With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the company took a step many had been asking it, but the round physical home button on the bottom made a 4.7 inch iPhone 6 bigger than a 5.2 inch Moto X (2nd Gen), while the 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus is bigger than the 6 inch Nexus 6.

Image Source: Computer Bild

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