We’ve seen quite a few leaks to date that focus on the iPhone 8 hardware and its all-screen design, but today the rumor mill is switching gears and offering up details on the new iPhone’s software.
Apple is testing the removal of the home button on the iPhone 8, according to a report from Bloomberg, and replacing it with a thin software bar at the bottom of the display. It’s said that you can drag up on this bar from the lock screen to open the phone, and when inside an app, dragging up on the bar will go into the multitasking menu. You can then continue to drag upward to return to the home screen.
The removal of the home button on the iPhone 8 would be a big deal because every other iPhone released in the past 10 years has had that home button. Such a move could also make sense, though. Removing the physical Home button would help achieve the iPhone 8’s all-screen design, and simply switching to a virtual home button could take up a lot of valuable screen space.
Today’s report goes on to share a couple more details about the iPhone 8’s software. It’s said that the device will have a new multitasking view with several standalone cards rather than the current stack of cards interface. The report also says that the iPhone 8’s app dock will be a floating gray bar similar to the iPad’s dock on iOS 11, which you can see here.
It’s rumored that Apple will unveil the iPhone 8, along with two other new iPhone models and a new Apple Watch, at an event on September 12th.