New iPhone might have a 'function area' instead of a home button
There's no lack of rumors about the upcoming iPhone's screen, which is widely expected to be covering the phone's entire face. But the latest report from reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI securities is perhaps the most detailed yet.
The report, via MacRumors, claims the new iPhone (which will probably be called iPhone 8) will have a 5.8-inch OLED display, but only 5.15 inches of that will actually be the usable screen. The lower part of the display will be reserved for the "function area," which will presumably host virtual buttons and, possibly, an under-the-screen fingerprint reader.
The report even shares the exact screen resolutions for the new iPhone -- 2,800x1,242 pixels for the entire screen, and 2,436x1,125 pixels for the 5.15-inch, "usable" portion. All of that, however, will fit into a form factor that's roughly as big as a "regular" 4.7-inch phone.
It's unclear how this would actually work in practice. The way it's described, it's not that much different from some Android models, which have a reserved space for controls under the main screen -- a space that cannot be used for actually viewing content. While that may look cool, we'd much rather see a fully usable, edge-to-edge screen.
Kuo also said the new iPhone will come with "other biometric technologies" but does not offer any details as to what these may be.
All of this pertains only to one new variant of the iPhone, Kuo claims. This version, with a possible price tag of $1,000, will be the only one to get most of the cool new features. The other two devices will be 4.7-inch and a 5.5-inch phones -- potentially just evolutionary upgrades of the current iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus.
As always, none of this is officially confirmed by Apple and very likely won't be until the phone launches, probably in the fall.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
