A recently spotted patent filing from Apple hints at an iPhone 8 with literally no physical buttons.
Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8 has long been rumoured to be an all-glass device with an OLED panel. When you think about it, having touch-only buttons makes absolute sense. How do you make an all-glass body with physical buttons otherwise?
We’ve already seen such a design in action on the Mi 5s, which boasts of a fingerprint sensor and home button combo under glass. Apple is expected to do the same for the iPhone 8 as well. We’re not sure how comfortable it’ll be to replace the volume and power buttons with a touch-sensitive button, but it shouldn’t take too long to adapt.
This is just conjecture of course, so don’t take any of this as fact.
Patently Apple spotted this filing in Apple’s latest batch of patent applications. There are a number of other patent applications for foldable displays among the filings as well and they’re worth looking at.
Historically, it’s taken 2-3 years before we’ve sees a real-world application for technology patents of this nature.
So far, the information we’ve gathered on the iPhone 8 suggests a devices with dual-cameras, an OLED panel for the display, an all-glass exterior, wireless charging support and a combo home-button/TouchID sensor under the front glass.
It’s certainly shaping up to be an interesting device and could very well be the most interesting product that Apple has released in at least 3 years.
