After uncovering a host of new iPhone 8 details in a HomePod firmware release, iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith has been revealing even more on Monday night.
In a series of tweets, Troughton-Smith share tidbits about the iPhone 8 Status Bar, a new Tap to Wake feature, the virtual Home button, Touch ID, and the keyboard.
The Status Bar
Regarding the Status Bar, the developer notes that “UIStatusBar has been redone with a new visual provider system,” with a new “split” option making its first appearance, likely to accommodate the notch that houses the various sensors and earpiece at the top of the iPhone 8 screen. Based on his findings, Troughton-Smith says “the new status bar seems a lot more complex and powerful in design, maybe even interactive.”
Tap to Wake
While digging into the HomePod firmware, the prolific iOS developer found out that the iPhone 8 seems to support some sort of Tap to Wake feature. With the physical Home button rumored to completely disappear, Tap to Wake could be an alternate way of waking the phone to look at pending notifications when the device is laying on a table for example.
Home indicator
According to strings of code found in the HomePod firmware, Troughton-Smith seems to believe the Home button could be referred to as the Home indicator, a name that makes sense assuming the physical button will indeed go away and be replaced by a visual indicator. Furthermore, it seems that the Home indicator can be hidden, depending on context.
Dock UI for keyboard
Additional details uncovered by the developer seem to indicate the keyboard of the iPhone 8 has a new dock UI. Troughton-Smith thinks this dock could be used to house buttons such as the globe or mic icons into this area. I’m thinking it might have more to do with a TouchBar-like feature that could display an emoji picker, for example.
No Touch ID under the display?
Finally, Troughton-Smith says he has seen no indication Touch ID could have successfully been moved under the display. There is of course no guarantee of this being one way or the other, and recent rumors have been somewhat contradicting about this as well.
All these details revealed by the developer help us paint a better picture of not only what the iPhone 8 might look like, but also what software features it could sport. One thing’s for sure, people at Apple are probably watching very closely what Troughton-Smith has been finding out and sharing with everybody on Twitter. It makes you wonder whether this was an intentional move by Apple…