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Iphone Apple Hardware

Apple's Next Year iPhone Won't Have the Home Button: NYTimes 217

Posted by msmash from the future-roadmap dept.
The reviews for the Apple's new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are live today. The New York Times, for instance, has given the smartphone a fairly positive review. However, in the story, the reporter says that the company's next flagship iPhone won't have the home button (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; here's an alternate source). Instead, the display will serve the purpose of the home button as well, the report added. From the report:Apple is likely to continue making iPhones without headphone jacks, and next year's iPhone will have a full-screen face with the virtual button built directly into the screen, according to two people at the company who spoke on condition of anonymity because the product details are private.
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Apple's Next Year iPhone Won't Have the Home Button: NYTimes More

Apple's Next Year iPhone Won't Have the Home Button: NYTimes

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  • Gimme Wireless charging as well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bigdady92 ( 635263 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:34PM (#52880003) Homepage
    and they can close off all the ports completely. let me take the phone under water and all that hoopla about removing the jack will be worth it.

    • Re:Gimme Wireless charging as well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tripleevenfall ( 1990004 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:39PM (#52880053)

      Yes, while having a headphone jack, home button, and a charging port are all convenient - you can use any headphones in the world. the headphones don't run out of batteries, you don't need to carry a dongle around, the home button gives you a tactile button to wake the phone or check the screen or determine orientation when you can't look at it, and the charging port allows much faster charging than wireless - who wants everything to work as well as it could?

      Yes, we should eliminate all those things which are working great, so there are no ports, because... reasons

      • Re:Gimme Wireless charging as well (Score:5, Funny)

        by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:43PM (#52880105) Journal

        Well, you could always use a Samsung phone and burn to death instead, but hey, let's bitch about a fucking headphone socket...

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          That's one particular phone. There are many Samsung phones that aren't a fire hazard as well as many other phones from different manufactures. The headphone jack removal is worth bitching about. Hands down the most disgusting thing Apple has done since the release of the original Mac with it's black and white screen and single button mouse.

        • Sony claims prior art in fire-inducing lithium batteries.

          (And "hoverboard"-style self-balancing rollwe's opinion?
          "Under 100kWh. Meh. Amateurs")

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SeaFox ( 739806 )

          Well, you could always use a Samsung phone and burn to death instead, but hey, let's bitch about a fucking headphone socket...

          Would it still burn me if I took it underwater like the OP wants to do?

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Yes, we should eliminate all those things which are working great, so there are no ports, because... reasons

        Yeah, because don't all of us spend every minute underwater these days? Take away all the ports and tactile items and make me buy new shit!

        Coming soon: the iButton, a $79 plastic cap that fits onto the phone where the Home button used to be, so people can feel where it is. (Just like on that horrid old last-year's model that no iTard would be caught dead carrying.)

        • Yes, we should eliminate all those things which are working great, so there are no ports, because... reasons

          Yeah, because don't all of us spend every minute underwater these days? Take away all the ports and tactile items and make me buy new shit!

          Coming soon: the iButton, a $79 plastic cap that fits onto the phone where the Home button used to be, so people can feel where it is. (Just like on that horrid old last-year's model that no iTard would be caught dead carrying.)

          My fsckin ford can beat your Chevy too! Tell me, what is it in your makeup that makes you have the deep seated need to have such hatred? The need to call iphone users retarded? I have iPhones because they integrate with my other hardware. I have a Samsung tablet because I wanted to understand Android. From actual experience the missing headphone jack means nothing, especially since if you want to plug into a phone, it can't be difficult to plug in two things. and presumably one would keep their dongle plugg

          • Tell me, what is it in your makeup that makes you have the deep seated need to have such hatred?

            Why? Because I hate companies that behave like assholes, and I have disdain for the fanbois who slavishly follow them like zombies after fresh meat. And I'd slam any company that behaves this way- Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle, etc etc. (I own Android and Apple devices, so I've got the right to critique them as I see fit.)

            -

            I do take burning batteries pretty seriously though - I'll admit as much.

            Exactly- how those numbnuts at Samsung could have let this little flaw slip by is beyond me. And by "little flaw", I mean something that may burn your house down or injure you, possib

      • you don't need to carry a dongle around,

        Please explain exactly why carrying wired headphones around is the greatest thinng in the world, but 100 percent unacceptable to plug those same best solution headphones into a dongle. If I actually had to plug a legacy headset into an iPhone, I'd probably just plug the headphone plug into the dongle, then keep the thing plugged in and store it in the place where I stored the headphones. But that must be an inconvenience beyond the pale.

        It's like plug one thing in, and it is wonderful, a superior setup,

    • Or wait will apple brake though differing priorities between Apple and the carriers. Or will bend over and let people get raped at $15-$20 a meg when roaming with a sim that can't be changed?

    • Other phones that are water resistant have those things. And a product was demo'd that could turn a phone water proof years ago even with all the ports.

  • I'll wait until the iPhone 9 (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:36PM (#52880033) Homepage Journal
    The iPhone 9 won't have a screen. This will at least double battery life.

    • I wait until they're selling plain air in a box.

    • The iPhone 9 won't have a screen. This will at least double battery life.

      The screen is the iWatch... Watch it actually happen. :)

      • I mean is doing.

        Their next iteration (Pebble 2 / Pebble Time 2) is *still* only bluetooth connected and with limited low-power processing.

        But if you want to go smartphone-less, instead of trying to pack extra smartphone functionality into the watch itself (3G connectivity, Wifi support, whatever...)
        they also develop the Pebble Core a small screen-less android powered wearable computer.

        Essentially, the screen-less iPhone of your joke, but for real, and powered by Android instead of iOS (and not called the "i

    • iPhone 9 is obsolete. With iPhone 10 you don't ever get a telephone: you just transfer your money to Apple, and nothing else happens.
    • iPhone Shuffle?

  • Interesting - let's see what happens (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:41PM (#52880087)

    I wonder if the other hardware switches are going away as well. If so, I also wonder whether there'll at least be a "paperclip hole" to reboot the thing if it locks up. As much as I'm not a fan of killing useful functionality just because Jony Ive says I don't need it anymore, how they implement this will be the interesting detail. If it were Google or Microsoft, I'd say this would be a good way to ensure the device is on in a low-power state perpetually broadcasting its location and usage data. So far Apple seems to have resisted a lot of this data mining stuff...we'll see.

    As a lesson from another industry, Ford removed most of the physical knobs and switches from their cars when they first introduced MyFordTouch. Owners freaked out when the touch screen wasn't as responsive as they'd hoped, and some of the switches have come back over time. Altering consumer behavior can be very difficult even if your consumers are rabid fans who think you can do no wrong. :-)

  • Anybody look at the "artist's concept" sketch in the article? I have a hard time taking any speculation seriously when their artist puts "Press any key to unlock" on a touch screen only device.
    • If Apple puts that on the screen then they should except 1M+ support calls from users asking where the any key is.

  • Aesthetics Usability (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They're off the deep end of form over function.

  • That means the touchscreen screen will have extremely high resolution, otherwise they will lose the fingerprint-unlock.
    • Or they will redesign the lock/unlock button and put the fingerprint scanner there. That's what Android OEM's have done that removed the physical "home" buttons from their devices.

  • We Listen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:50PM (#52880163)

    When you said you wanted a thinner iPhone with better battery life. We listened and got rid of that ancient headphone jack.

    When you said you wanted a sleeker iPhone, something that really said 'the future is here', we listened and got rid of the last button on the iPhone.

    Now, when you say that the internet, social media and games are too much of a distraction from your life and job and family, we've listened.

    Introducing, the iBrick. Sleek styling, not a single button to be found, infinite battery life.

    It can't access the Internet.
    No social media or games are supported.
    It doesn't have a screen.
    It won't even make phone calls.

    The iBrick. The sexiest hunk of useless plastic you'll ever pay for. Coming this fall starting at $799.99, exclusively available through AT&T.

    • Are your users stupid?
      Introducing the StupidaMouse, a mouse with no buttons!
      What your users can't click, they can't screw up!

      https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/... [staticflickr.com]

    • TheNoPhone already beat them to it... And they're sitting on the patent already.

    • The iBrick. The sexiest hunk of useless plastic you'll ever pay for. Coming this fall starting at $799.99, exclusively available through AT&T.

      As if Jony Ive would work with plastic. What a peasant's material.

      The iBrick will use a unique platinum alloy, carefully polished to ensure a uniform smoothness down to a micron before receiving a special anodized coating made with unicorn tears.

    • Well they clearly need to remove the speaker and the microphone as they are potential points of water ingress, because you can't have any openings to the outside world when you're going for splash resistance.

  • Android did it (Score:3)

    by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @12:54PM (#52880217)
    No buttons, Android did it. How is this innovating. Apple you are losing and losing fast. If Microsoft ever got it's act together you'd be in 3rd place.

  • 20 years ago a good of friend of mine posited, that a good computer should have only two buttons:

    • Do
    • Undo

    His proposal made sense at the time, but Apple went beyond that with one, and are now, if TFA is to be believed, going for zero... Is not technology wonderful?

  • Having killed the rest of the electronics industry (can't find a single retailer in all of Greater Chicagoland that sells tabletop HD radios, having been told repeatedly, by high-end stereo places even, that "nobody listens to radio anymore") the so-called "smart" so-called "telephones" are now eating themselves into singularity. Everyone else even at the Linux meetings has one of those spy-machines that exclusively runs closed proprietary software. What the heck happened to reality? Is there anyone else le

  • fuck the blind people (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nobody cares about the blind egh ?

    • Regardless of your personal and professional accomplishments, if you're blind, you couldn't possibly be cool enough to own Apple hardware.

      Please try not to be bitter.

  • The next one won't have a screen, and you'll have to buy goggles.

  • Apple iPhone 8 - no phone home ... button.

  • To Apple Courage is not just a word, it's a noun.

  • has come to. News now is: marketing rumours about the iAnal flagship of a company that ceased innovating... how long ago again ? Ten years ? Imhotep, Archimedes and Einstein are turning in their graves.

  • Tim Cook: "And after that we're going to remove the phone capability and put in 7 cameras."

  • Can anyone please explain? That seemed to be the only useful addition they did in the past 5 years.

  • Here's why the whole "headphone ports are obsolete" concept is wrong (I will address the 'just use a dongle' retort after):

    1. It is a data port. Yes, it can be used for headphones, but it is very often used as a data port for all manner of key add-ons like a Square card reader. To force companies to make an Apple only version instead of a 1/8 port version compatable with everything, Apple is guaranteeing more cost and annoyance for consumers.

    Also, they just removed a port without replacing it with anything.

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