The home button is headed to the trash bin if a report by Bloomberg[1] is to be believed. According to the report, Apple is ditching the button to make room for a larger screen in one version of the next iPhone. Instead of a home button, users will perform actions using on-screen gesture controls involving a sort of dock of icons.
If true this would be the biggest change in iPhone design since the launch of the device in 2007.
The home button has been a staple in iPhone design since the beginning. It’s used to wake a device, return to the app grid, and, more recently, for Touch ID fingerprint recognition. All those tasks would be preformed differently if removed. However, the Bloomberg report carefully states only the high-end version of the upcoming iPhone is losing the home button, which jives with other rumors from the past few months.
Instead of pressing a home button, users would interact with a thing software bar that can be moved around for different actions. Drag it to the middle of the screen to open the phone, or if in an app, activate the multitasking menu. Users can change apps or go back to the home screen, Bloomberg says. And it shouldn’t end there. If this report is true, Apple likely has cooked up all sorts of logical interactions for this software bar.
Apple has been foreshadowing the removal of the home button for some time. For the iPhone 7, it replaced the button with a non-moving version that simulated a click through a tactile response. The iPad also recently gained an app menu reminiscent of OS X’s dock. Bloomberg uses this as an illustration of the upcoming iPhone changes.
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