iPhone 8 rumors: what we expect from Apple’s new iPhone

Apple’s upcoming September 12th event is more than just its annual hardware event: it marks 10 years of iPhone launches, which first shipped in June 2007 and is undeniably Apple’s most important product. So, it’s not surprising that many of the early reports and rumors about this event have been focused on the iPhone. Will it have an OLED display? Will there will be a “pro” version of the phone? And just how much will it cost?

But over the past decade, there have been just as many other notable product developments for Apple, on its path to becoming the world’s most valuable tech company. It created the App Store, and the app economy. It shipped the long-rumored iPad. It got into wearable computing and health and fitness tracking with the launch of the Apple Watch. Its “services” business became one of the fastest-growing areas for the company.

Apple’s newest iPhone is coming soon, and whether it ends up being called the iPhone 8, iPhone Pro, iPhone Edition, or something else, one thing is clear: this is shaping up to be one of the biggest updates Apple has ever made to its smartphone line.

If you haven’t been following all the rumors swirling around the iPhone 8 over the last few months, don’t worry — we’ve rounded up all the biggest ones here, along with our best guess as to how likely they are to actually show up

Here are three things I’m not interested in: a $1,000 iPhone, Apple Music, and paid iCloud storage. I’m neither an Apple hater nor a cheapskate; I simply prefer to spend my money on more tangible and lasting things than ephemeral subscriptions or the early-adopter tax for the latest and greatest iPhone of 2017. But an analyst note from Barclays has thrown up an intriguing possibility that could, all of a sudden, kindle my interest in Apple’s services and new hardware: what if Apple bundled free Apple Music and iCloud storage with the purchase of the top new iPhone model?

The Barclays analysis, as reported by Business Insider, proceeds on the presumption that Apple does indeed plan to throw in a year’s worth of Apple Music and 200GB of iCloud space with the purchase of its priciest iPhone. While it’s not immediately clear whether Barclays knows this or is guessing, I find just the idea itself a highly appealing and clever way to help new iPhone buyers overcome the initial shock of paying four figures for a device. Barclays conducted a survey showing that people’s purchasing intent for the new iPhone dropped in half when the price went from $800-something to $1,000 or above. With a nominal value of $156 for the proposed bundled Apple services, buyers of the $1,000 iPhone wouldn’t be paying all that money just for a device.

It seems like nearly every detail has leaked about the flashy new iPhone that Apple is going to announce next week. But there’s one thing that’s stayed under wraps through every supply chain report, firmware leak, and news story: the phone’s name.

Everyone’s been calling it the iPhone 8, but chances are, it won’t be named that. This phone is supposed to sit apart from the regular iPhone, so it’ll probably be given a more distinct name to make it stand out.

Touch ID won’t be part of the redesigned iPhone that Apple introduces next week, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rumors that Apple will ditch the fingerprint sensor, which it first popularized on smartphones in 2013, have been popping up for months now. Bloomberg said in July that Apple was hoping to replace the fingerprint sensor with facial recognition, but it wasn’t a sure thing just yet. That same day, an industry analyst went further and said the phone likely won’t include Touch ID on its front. Now, the Journal appears to be the first news outlet to report that a fingerprint scanner won’t be included at all.

All the rumors about the upcoming iPhone 8 point to Apple making some fairly big changes to the device’s user interface, with tweaks needed to accommodate the removal of the home button and the addition of a “notch” housing the phone’s camera and sensors at the top of the display.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has a new report on how exactly these changes could be implemented, with Gurman’s sources suggesting that Apple is looking for ways to replace the functionality usually assigned to the home button. (E.g. returning to the home screen, opening up the multitasking interface, and accessing Siri.)

Apple’s redesigned iPhone is going to be an expensive one. According to The New York Times, the nearly bezel-free iPhone we’ve been hearing about for the last several months will sell for “around $999,” about $350 more than the standard iPhone does today.

Next month, Apple is expected to introduce three new iPhones. Two will be slightly redesigned and updated versions of the iPhone 7, and one will be this high-end iPhone with a brand new design and a nearly full-screen display. There had been speculation before now that this iPhone would be at least $1,000: for one, Apple would need to charge more than $769, the price of the Plus-sized iPhone; and two, there’s been some assumption that Apple will want to depress sales a bit so that it can better manage supply. But this is the first time a price has actually been reported.

We're about a month away from new iPhones being unveiled, and that means all kinds of mock-ups and dummy models and supposed part leaks have been coming out. And one kind of odd thing that's popped up several times over the last week has been a new iPhone color: it's somewhere between orange and bronze and pink; it's objectively pretty ugly; and I think I really love it.

Supposedly, this year's iPhones will only come in three colors — and one of them won't be rose gold. It's safe to assume the first two colors are black and white, and it seems very possible that Apple would make the third into yet another pinkish, goldish shade (even if it doesn't actually look all that gold). The last gold and rose gold models were pretty popular, after all.

There’s been a host of leaks about the upcoming iPhone recently, most of which have been sourced from accidentally-released HomePod firmware, which also runs iOS. In the latest discoveries, developers have uncovered what looks like a resizable home button for the new handset, as well as support for Apple Pay authentication using facial recognition.

In a series of tweets, developer Guilherme Rambo found references to ‘Pearl ID’ (Apple’s codename for its facial recognition system) that suggest it will be able to store multiple faces and will be accessible by third party apps. The firmware also includes the phrase ‘multi biometric,’ which suggests the phone might support two-step biometric authentication for extra security. That would mean combining, say, facial recognition and fingerprint ID. Additionally, the firmware code suggests that both the front and rear camera of the phone will be used for facial recognition.

Another day, another possible iPhone 8 leak, as developer Guilherme Rambo continues to mine the accidentally leaked HomePod code for more information on Apple’s upcoming device. The latest from Rambo is that the iPhone 8 could leverage the widely rumored front-facing 3D sensor on the device to allow for the phone to detect whether or not a user is actively using the phone, and to silence notifications if you are (via 9to5Mac).

As to whether or not Rambo’s conclusions of the feature are correct, it’s certainly an interesting and useful sounding addition. After all, you probably don’t need your phone blasting your custom ringtone of The Office theme to let you know your boss is calling if you’re already holding your phone. Plus, if the rumor is true, it’d be another interesting way for Apple to use the additional new hardware in the device behind the speculated face unlock feature.

Apple started a massive trend, but now it might be about to deem it dead. Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has previously been a reliable source of Apple information, says that the company won’t release a rose gold iPhone 8. Instead, the phone will only be available in black, silver, and gold.

MacRumors points out that this news fits with a leak earlier this week that showed off three models of the phone in those colors. The gold version does include some copper tones, though. The leak came from Weibo:

One of the fascinating aspects of this year’s iPhone rumor mill has been the uncertainty generated by conflicting rumors about exactly how the next phone will take shape, though many of those doubts are starting to dissipate now. A new image, freshly posted by Evan Blass, gives us a good view of what the screen-dominated front of the expected iPhone 8 will look like. There’s the now-familiar wedge at the top to accommodate the earpiece, front-facing camera and sensors, and then just a big old expanse of display.

The device is framed inside a big and chunky case from Urban Armor Gear, a company that has the same case for the existing iPhone 7 devices. The March date on the screen might suggest that it’s an old render and not strictly representative of Apple’s latest or final design, however Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who is famous for his insider sources at Apple, has also piped in to describe this as “a good look at the notch” of the upcoming iPhone.

Apple could be switching things up, if a couple of purported iPhone dummy models are to be believed. 9to5Mac received a couple images from leak specialist Sonny Dickson that depict next iteration of iPhones with a glass backing, which could mean that the models could have inductive charging as a feature.

Apple is expected to announce three new iPhone models next month: the iPhone 8, which will be a major overhaul for the phone — and which might not arrive until 2018, as well as a refresh to the iPhone 7 models.

After months of rumors that the next iPhone will be delayed, Apple has given a quiet cue to the contrary. In its earnings release today, Apple said it expects to see anywhere from $49 billion to $52 billion in revenue next quarter — a number high enough to indicate that an iPhone will launch on time. The quarter runs through September 30th, so we should expect to see an early September iPhone event and a launch a week or so thereafter.

Tim Cook hinted as much during a call discussing the earnings, saying Apple would have “very exciting Fall.”

Will Apple release an AR headset you can slip the next iPhone into, much like Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and the Gear VR? That’s ripe for speculation now that we know Apple’s upcoming iPhone could have an even higher-resolution display, delivering as much of a visual leap forward from current-generation iPhones as the iPhone 4’s Retina display was from the original. The upcoming iPhone is anticipated to have a functional resolution of 1125 x 2436, meaning if the phone was used as a screen for an AR headset, visual qualities wouldn’t be compromised because of the high pixel density.

Apple has been teasing its interest in AR over the past year, with all kinds of approaches seemingly in consideration. Apple CEO Tim Cook began talking up Apple’s interest last July. In November, Bloomberg reported that Apple was weighing entering the digital glasses space, with a device launching as early as 2018. Cook then hinted in February that the company is working on some sort of AR product. And last month, Apple filed a patent application including mock-ups for a pair of digital glasses that could interact with its iPhone and iPads.

More details about Apple’s upcoming iPhone have been uncovered in HomePod’s firmware — which runs iOS like the iPhone — revealing features including a tap to wake function, facial expression and attention detection, and the long-rumored removal of the home button. Apple accidentally released the firmware over the weekend resulting in a frenzy of analysis about previously unknown features.

Developers including Steve Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo have been tweeting their findings, notably the discovery of the new iPhone’s bezel-less screen design. They’ve also concluded that the resolution for the iPhone 8 could be as much of a visual leap forward from current-generation iPhones as the iPhone 4’s Retina display was from the original iPhone. Apple is using codenames for both its face recognition feature and the bezel-less phone, called “Pearl ID” and “D22” respectively.

The next iPhone — the one with the bezel-less screen that leaked out in the HomePod code over the weekend — might be getting a massive jump in screen resolution in addition to the revamped design, according to a tweet from developer Steve Troughton-Smith. According to Troughton-Smith, there are references in the code for an upcoming iPhone with a functional resolution of 1125 x 2436, a number that gels with an existing rumor back in February from typically reliable KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

As the mockup from 9to5Mac shows below, Kuo’s number assumes that a portion of the rumored 5.8-inch display will be portioned off as a virtual home button / function area, leaving a 5.15-inch chunk of the display as a functional screen.

Trying to pin down the precise features of the next iPhone has been difficult of late. We’re all expecting a standard “S” model iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that won’t be radically different from last year’s, but we’re also expecting a high-end model. It appears, based on a tweet from developer Steve Troughton-Smith, that at least one of those models will have face unlock. And the high-end model (alternately referred to as the “iPhone Pro,” “iPhone 8,” or even “iPhone X”) will have a bezel-less screen that wraps around the speaker and cameras at the top.

Troughton-Smith and other developers have been spending the past day examining the code inside the Apple HomePod, which pretty much contains most of the codebase for iPhones inside it. Apple accidentally pushed the firmware for the HomePod out yesterday, and a bunch of developers grabbed it. From that code, we’ve learned a bit about how the LED lights on the top may work, but it also is giving us an opportunity to learn about what might be coming to the next iPhones. To wit:

Apple was granted a new patent this week, one that’s particularly interesting given Apple’s upcoming HomePod and rumors of a wirelessly charging iPhone 8: an iPhone dock that could have Siri and a wireless charger built in.

The patent, officially for a “Smart dock for activating a voice recognition mode of a portable electronic device,” is pretty broad. It covers a dock that could recognize that an iPhone had been placed into it and activate a microphone that could listen for voice commands to allow users to control a phone from across a room. In other words, it’s a Siri dock. The patent also covers multiple ways of charging said iPhone, including wireless charging, and describes docks that range just simple connectors with a microphone and speaker to full-fledged miniature computers with buttons and displays.

Apple is planning to release a screen-recording feature when it publicly rolls out iOS 11. Beta testers have already played around with it, and yes, it's cool and easy to use. Now it seems the company is considering rolling out an ancillary feature that might let people start live stream broadcasts from their home screen. 

The Next Web reports that in the third beta version of the new OS, Apple has added a "start broadcast" option. The button currently does nothing, although some people have suggested it might eventually work with AirPlay. But as The Next Web points out, there's already an AirPlay mirroring button in the Control Center, so it'd be redundant. 

Plugging things in is no fun, especially when a certain company refuses to embrace industry-standard plugs. Wireless charging is an obvious solution, which has been embraced by many Android manufacturers but has remained conspicuously absent from the iPhone. That might be about to change.

Wistron is a manufacturer in India, which Apple recently added to its roster to increase market share in the country and bring prices down. On Wednesday, Wistron's CEO Robert Hwang told reporters that the next generation of iPhones will include "new features like waterproof and wireless charging."