While this year’s iPhone 7 is rumored to offer only “subtle changes” from the iPhone 6s, the 2017 iPhone will reportedly bring a major overhaul, and today a new detail of the device has leaked.
As part of the 2017 iPhone’s design overhaul, the device will reportedly lack a Home button. That’s according to Bloomberg and Mark Gurman, the latter of which added that the missing Home button will let Apple “[focus] in on the OLED screen.” All other iPhone models have had LCD screens.
Every iPhone model since the original model in 2007 has featured a Home button that is used to send users back to their home screen. The button is also used for quickly switching to other open apps when double-tapped, and on models with a Touch ID sensor, it can be used to unlock the phone and authenticate Apple Pay purchases.
The removal of the Home button would be a major design change for the iPhone, not only because the Home button has been around for so long, but also because it would let Apple shrink the bezel below the phone’s screen. That would help to make the device smaller overall.
