One of the newest features built into the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is a touch-sensitive Home button with a taptic engine. The new "solid-state" Home button is supposed to be less likely to malfunction since it has less moving parts. But what should you do if the Home button on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus does actually fail? Apple created a temporary solution to that problem.
After the diagnostic software in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus determines that the Home button is malfunctioning, the temporary solution offered is a digital onscreen home button. This feature was discovered by MacRumors forum member Wayne Goddard (iwayne):
Screenshot of MacRumors forum post by MacRumors user Wayne Goddard
Goddard shared the photo in a forum post after his jet black 256GB iPhone 7 display turned off while it was charging. When the device was turned back on, this is the error message that appeared: “The Home Button May Need Service. In the meantime, you can use the onscreen Home button below.”
When Goddard was asked whether he tried to restart his iPhone 7 after seeing the error message, he said: “Yes and it worked at first then started spazzing out. The Haptic engine kept firing 3-4 times in a row for every ‘press’. I restarted again and it's back to not working.” Goddard said that this problem happened after his iPhone 7 got wet. He used a wet paper towel to clean off the phone before putting on a new case. It is surprising that the iPhone 7 started having the Home button problem after getting a little bit wet because Apple's new flagship smartphones come with an IP67 rating. The digital onscreen home button looks similar to the Assistive Touch accessibility feature that has been built into iOS years now.
10/19/16 12AM ET Update: Goddard told me that the issue resolved itself 12 hours later so he cancelled his appointment with the Apple Genius Bar. Perhaps the home button on the iPhone 7 started working again when it dried out or maybe it was due to a different glitch altogether.
The iPhone 7 is not the only device that has a digital onscreen home button. Certain Android devices have similar onscreen home buttons (shaped like a house instead of a circle) rather than a physical home button that presses inward. What makes Apple's digital onscreen home button unique is that it acts as a safeguard in the form of a software application in response to a detected hardware problem.
Another feature worth pointing out in regards to the iPhone 7 Home button is its customizability. You can adjust the Home button feedback intensity of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus by going to Settings app > General > Home Button. From there, you can choose from three options: light, medium and heavy clicks.
Next year Apple is rumored to be removing the Home button from the iPhone 8 device in favor of an edge-to-edge OLED display. And Apple is reportedly going to integrate a digital Home button directly into the display. So the iPhone 7 safeguard feature may be a preview of what is to come in future iPhones.
What are your thoughts about Apple's safeguard feature for the Home button? Please leave a comment!
