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Huge Apple iPhone 8 Feature Hinted By Software Code

This article is more than 6 years old.

Apple

As the launch date of the iPhone 8 approaches, it will be fascinating to see which rumors are true. There are rumors that Apple is going to announce 3 new iPhones including a 4.7-inch iPhone 7S, a 5.5-inch iPhone 7S Plus and the highly anticipated 5.8-inch iPhone 8. What is expected to set the iPhone 8 (another possible name for this version is iPhone Pro) apart is the edge-to-edge OLED display, facial recognition and wireless charging.

Sources have been conflicting as to whether the iPhone 8 will have a Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the back or no fingerprint sensor at all. There seems to be a trail of breadcrumbs suggesting both possibilities though. For example, iOS developer Guilherme Rambo published a couple videos on Twitter showing how app switching would work without double tapping the Home button. Rambo discovered this feature in a recent iOS 11 beta. The iPhone in these videos do not appear to be an iPhone 8:

You will notice in the video that the app switching can be controlled with a finger swipe up gesture on the screen. This seems like a great way to navigate iOS in case there is a lack of a Home button. Currently, double tapping the Home button or pushing down on the left side of the display with 3D Touch pulls up the app switcher. The video demo also shows that swiping from the right of the display opens Control Center instead of swiping up from the bottom of the display. Rambo said this could just be a prototype because this feature was programmed in the iOS 11 beta released in May. And swiping from the right will show the Widgets just like how it works in iOS 10.

Steven Troughton-Smith, another iOS developer that found clues in Apple's software, believes it is logical why Apple would relocate the Control Center. “IMO, w/ a gesture area at bottom of the iPhone 8, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Control Center moved elsewhere to allow for system gestures," wrote Troughton-Smith in a tweet. It appears that the Control Center will only be pulled up when you swipe from the Lock Screen in iOS 11. In the current version of iOS, swiping right from the Lock Screen opens the Camera app.

This is not the only interesting feature that Rambo discovered in an Apple's software code. Earlier this month, Rambo found out that iOS 11 may silence notifications if a user is looking at the device. But this feature may be limited to the iPhone 8, which is the only model expected to have facial recognition.

Another piece of information that corroborates Apple's plan to phase out the fingerprint sensor in favor of facial recognition is a report by the Korea Herald. The report claims that Apple's facial recognition technology is so fast it can "sense a user's face in the millionths of a second."

According to a report by Chinese news website GeekBar via 9to5Mac, the iPhone 8 will be available in 64GB, 256GB and even 512GB options. This is the first time I heard about a 512GB option so I'm not sure if that possibility is credible. The report says that the 64GB and 256GB storage modules are being supplied by Toshiba and Western Digital's SanDisk while the 512GB module is being supplied by Samsung and SK Hynix.

Apple announced iOS 11 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Some of the highlights include a redesigned app drawer, message app syncing across all iOS devices, payment transfers via Messages, multiple real-time language translation in Siri, Live Photo editing, indoor mall/airport maps in the Maps app, Do Not Disturb While Driving, document scanning in the Notes app and revamped designs for News, Apple Music and the App Store. Some of the new features coming to the iPad include a Slide Over feature to drag an app over another one to switch over, a new App Switcher feature that looks similar to the Launchpad on the Mac. And there is a new Files app for the iPad to quickly find, open and edit cloud files from iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Adobe Creative Cloud.

What are your thoughts about the gesture swiping changes? Please leave a comment!