There will be no iPhone 8 home button, according to various reports, which means that there will be one less way for users to wake up Apple's digital assistant Siri in the upcoming premium smartphone.
However, an iOS developer discovered that Apple will add another way for iPhone 8 users to wake up Siri, replacing the previous function of the home button.
iPhone 8 Siri Activation Options
For the iPhone 8, it is widely expected that users will still be able to activate Apple's digital assistant by saying the wake words "Hey Siri." The ability to wake up Siri by pressing and holding the home button, however, will no longer be a possibility, as the home button will not be present in the iPhone 8.
According to iOS developer Guilherme Rambo, there will be more than one way of waking up Siri in the iPhone 8. He discovered in Apple's source code, presumably from the iOS 11 beta, that there is a gesture to invoke Siri by holding the iPhone 8 lock button or the Sleep/Wake button as Apple officially calls it.
Rambo made the discovery as he was looking for any functions that Apple moved from the home button to the lock button for the iPhone 8. The inclusion of another way to wake up Siri through the lock button will serve as a good back-up to the primary way of activating the digital assistant through a voice command. However, this new function tied to the lock button adds to the growing list of commands associated with the button, including the improved Emergency SOS feature for the iOS 11.
iPhone 8 No Home Button Changes
The elimination of the method of waking up Siri by pressing and holding the home button is just one of the many effects of Apple's decision to remove the component from the front of the iPhone 8.
Perhaps the biggest change is the removal of the Touch ID fingerprint recognition system from the iPhone 8. According to reports, Apple will replace it with the Face ID facial recognition system, which is capable of accurately reading faces within millionths of a second but raises various security concerns.
We will know all about the iPhone 8, including the truth behind the elimination of the home button and the replacement of Touch ID with Face ID, once the smartphone is announced alongside the iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus in a Sept. 12 Apple event. We might even be surprised that the real iPhone 8 name is different from what we have been calling the smartphone all this time.
