When Apple releases its next iPhones, the iPhone 16 series, it could have a different design, with physical buttons replaced by capacitive ones, a new report has said.
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The claim comes from the Economic Daily News, and it could make for in iPhone that’s subtly unlike any models that have come before. Instead of power and volume buttons that move in and out as you touch them, as now, there would be capacitive buttons which sense pressure and respond with haptic feedback. That feedback makes the button feel like it’s moving when it’s not.
Apple has form here: later versions of the Touch ID home button on the iPhone used capacitive buttons—the iPhone SE still does. It really feels like the button is responding to a press by moving, but as is proved by pressing when the iPhone is turned off, it’s actually fixed in position.
The result is a phone with fewer moving parts. But Apple has never done this with a power button on the iPhone before. The report says the capacitive elements will be on both sides of the phone, with volume switches on one side, presumably with the Action button as well. The other side of the iPhone currently only has one button, the Side Button, which is used to turn the phone on and off.
Could Apple make this a capacitive element or would it save this feature for the predicted new Capture button? I’m puzzled as to how the power button could become a capacitive type, but I am excited by the possibility.
The report is emphatic that the change will “cancel the physical volume buttons and power buttons on both sides of the fuselage and replace them with capacitive touch buttons,” and that it will lead to “the goal of the physical button disappearing on the iPhone’s external body.”
The report also says something which casts doubt on one thing: are the capacitive button components really for the iPhone 16 series? It says, “it is expected to enter the release stage of volume shipment in the third quarter.”
That, of course, is the quarter that starts on July 1, and seems preposterously late for Apple’s needs, given that the iPhone is expected to launch in September. If this part of the rumor is accurate, it seems more likely that the buttons are being readied for the iPhone 17 series, not iPhone 16.
It’s worth adding that most other iPhone 16 leaks have pointed to mechanical buttons, so, again, it could be accurate on component detail but not the year. Stay tuned.