Something along these lines is enevitable and comprehendible. What I'm more interested in intellectually is how Apple handles the home button UI and the earpiece speaker in such a scenario. I presume the speaker just moves to the top bevel edge. I know pizio speaker or whatever they are called are possibly but am skeptical of their sound quality. But how is the home button UI handled?? If it's not an always-on portion or the display how can the user see it and press it in one go and how will they feel where it is in a dark room? Raise to wake? I like that I can feel the home button. Any alternative I can imagine is in some way a worse experience. Yes design is about trade offs, but this seems like it might be 'cool' replacing totally useable.
Sure, it is. But in the same way that going from a clickable home button to the current capacitive button. Or going from a physical keyboard to a touchscreen keyboard -- technically less good in that measure, but overall worth it. This could be no different.
I disagree. A non moving home button is better because its failure rate is likely much less and you can programmatically give the user the feel they like. And the user can still 'feel' the ring and feel the press-click. If someone can describe a better method I'd switch over. Describe it to me—how do I exit an app?
The screen could still be divided into an app space and a home button space. The Home button space could be dynamic in the sense that other information presented in it, like Back, Share and Tabs buttons, etc could rotate in place when the screen is orientated to landscape, while still remaining on the same end of the phone. That's more desirable than what happens currently, with those controls taking away a wide band along the bottom of the limited shorter dimension of the screen in landscape orientation.
And the whole virtual Home button space could fade away in some contexts or could act like the Mac's new Touch Bar, presenting context sensitive controls. Think video playback controls, game buttons/controls, etc. So the iPhone and iPad would feel more like the new Macs in this regard.
And when the phone is off, touching anywhere with a registered finger/thumb unlocks, as the entire screen in that context would act as the fingerprint sensor. If touched with an unregistered digit, the screen would simply light up with the lock screen or password entry screen. So, you could have a dedicated area for a Home button when needed (to return to the home screen from apps) but also have the convenience of an anywhere TouchID when the screen is off.
That's interesting, but the worrying part is when you said it'd fade away. The good thing now it the home button is more robust than that scenario. If an app freezes, for example, would the user need to force restart their phone as they cannot see a Home button to quit the app?
Real question is whether this fingerprint sensor can be spoofed. Article talks about being able to sense ridges but what about sensing a live body. We've all seen the full hand sensors in movies but do these actually work perfectly? What about wet or too dry hands? Or oily hands? As for a home button I agree with other commenters, it has to be something you can actually feel.
It doesn't necessarily need to be something you can feel if it works for the entire display, re unlocking. My issue is, for example, when you are in an app how do you get Home? Where do you press? Is it intuitive? Does it work every time? Is it only one interaction/press? The idea of 3D-touching the bottom edge to get to Home makes my skin crawl. As a power-user feature, sure, but as the standard way to go Home—yuck! Terrible idea. Leave those kinds of ideas to Microsoft.
The brilliance of TouchID is that there is very little friction between it and the home button. They are used in conjunction with each other, but it is not completely necessary. A physical home button can be placed on the side of the device.
Please, no. I'd hate a side home button.
Apple Watch has a physical side home button...
It's a watch; it's on your wrist, it's small; it has a large crown button. On a phone it's completely different.
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