The images of an iPhone 8 clone that hit the web yesterday give us a good indication what an iPhone 8 with a rear-mounted Touch ID sensor might look like. According to Benjamin Geskin, who tweeted out the rendered images, the device is based on an early iPhone 8 prototype.
The images were originally posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo. “All my sources said that this is totally wrong design,” Geskin cautioned, adding that iPhone 8 “is not going to look like that.”
The phone sports a slim bezels on the front face with no physical Home button.
On the back, we can clearly see a vertically stacked dual-lens camera and a Touch ID-like sensor, positioned below the Apple logo. The copycat device features an aluminum chassis.
iPhone 8, as you know, is said to feature a glass sandwich design in order to avoid any potential interference with its wireless charging components.
The placement of the fingerprint sensor on China’s iPhone 8 clone actually makes sense to me: it’s relatively easily reachable with one’s index finger, as opposed to Galaxy S8’s fingerprint sensor positioned next to the rear camera.
Some reports have suggested that one of the more than ten iPhone prototypes Apple has been testing has a rear Touch ID. Newer reports, however, have indicated that Apple has managed to integrate Touch ID into the display assembly after all.
Still, the company was smart enough to engineer an iPhone with a rear Touch ID as a fallback device, just in case.
To me, the biggest takeaway from looking at these renderings is that iPhones would look much better with some additional color options beyond the usual black, silver and gold choices.