New iPhone to Come With OLED ‘Function Area’ & Laser Biometrics: Report

As the iPhone’s launch nears it becomes more common to get a myriad of impressive and shocking leaks. The latest such leak, courtesy of the popular KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, proposes that the next generation of iPhone will replace the home button with a so called ‘function area’.

Function Area

The update follows in line of New York Times’ last year’s report, which predicted virtual buttons. The design, as a consequence, could feature an all-glass front.

The design of the phone itself will reportedly comprise of an all-display front, measuring 5.8-inch in size and coming with an OLED panel of 2800 x 1242 resolution. 5.15-inch of 2436 x 1125 resolution out of that will be the actual area of the phone’s screen, while the rest will be reserved for the function area. The phone’s actual dimensions are said to remain virtually the same as the existing iPhone 7.

It is yet to be seen whether Apple will just copy Android’s on-screen buttons or if its implementation is going to be more functional.

3D Laser Biometrics

Another earlier report from Rod Hall of J.P. Morgan predicted a new method of phone security and payments in the form of a 3D laser scanning module. The feature is said to facilitate facial recognition but could also potentially be helpful in augmented reality, something which Apple has been publicly backing for a while now. Or it could just be an iris scanner like the Samsung Note7.

Battery

The battery itself is rumored to be much bigger than a normal iPhone, despite being pretty much the same size, perhaps in order to aid the power-sucking display. No word was given for wireless charging, though, Apple’s inclusion in the Wireless consortium hints at the feature’s inclusion.

Price

As for the price, Ming-Chi Kuo is another analyst who believes it will fall in the $1000 ball park, much more than the current iPhones, mostly due to the slight increase in production costs due to OLED displays compared to the LCD iPhone 7 and 7s.

Related: Apple Signs $4.3 Billion Deal with Samsung for iPhone OLED Panels