Leaks Reveal New Features In Apple's Next iPhone

Though Apple officially unveils their newest iPhone on Tuesday, information is already leaking on the internet.

• Mashable: "Physically, it's expected to be about the same size as an iPhone 7, but with an edge-to-edge OLED display that's bigger than what is currently on the iPhone 7 Plus. It won't have a home button or Touch ID, and will likely use some kind of facial recognition tech to unlock."

• MacRumors cites a report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggesting facial recognition may just be one feature of a complex front camera with 3D sensing hardware, including a proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, and a structured light transmitter (using a surface-emitting laser) and receiver.

• CNET: "Irish iPhone programming guru Steve Troughton-Smith now feels sure he has the names of the three phones to be launched by Apple on Tuesday.... they'll (probably) be called the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and -- ta-da -- the iPhone X."

• Troughton-Smith also predicts a 3x screen at 1125x2436 resolution

• Fortune: "Apple's iPhone line is expected to catch up with Android phones in the area of wireless charging this year... just lay the phone down on a compatible charger mat or base or dock, and watch the battery fill up."

• 9to5Mac: "We've found a brand new feature called 'Animoji', which uses the 3D face sensors to create custom 3D animated emoji based on the expressions you make into the camera. Users will be able to make Animoji of unicorns, robots, pigs, pile of poo and many more."

Comments

I'm curious about the facial recognition

[93 Escort Wagon]

Initial rumors were they couldn't get TouchID working without an actual home button, and facial recognition was a fallback. I have a hard time seeing how that won't be a big step backward... so I'll be curious to see the announcement on Tuesday AND how well (or how poorly) it works in the real world.

TouchID works quite well, so the bar is pretty high.

Will the masses burn out from this churn?

[swb]

It seems more and more obvious that the utility value for smartphones generally peaked some time ago - messaging/email, web, photos and apps to some degree anywhere you are seems like the primary utility function of the smartphone.

Yet companies like Apple are on this business treadmill where they think they have to re-invent it every year in order to keep selling phones. They mostly coasted on the fact that the next model improved some aspects -- CPU, storage, photo quality -- some noticeable increment, but they didn't really increase the basic utility value.

It really seems like they've hit the point where not even technical incremental improvement adds very much, and now they're needlessly altering the experience just to sell new phones.

Maybe this works with some segment of the population, but will people generally start rebelling against this? Most of these changes don't seem like a better experience, at best the *same* experience that requires re-learning, at worst a lesser experience.