iPhone 8 - New Apple patent for a buttonless sensor

October 8, 2016

A new Apple patent shows the existence of a sensor without a button. Could it be in the iPhone 8?

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have just been released and we're already hearing reports and leaks about next year's iPhone 8, which is expected to be much more radical in design. Actually, now is probably the right time to start talking about it, since it's going to bring revolutionary changes to the iPhone lineup and hence probably the name (8 instead of 7s).

And in addition to Apple's switch from LCD to OLED displays now, the iPhone 8 is likely to have full front-facing coverage from a button-free display, which may be made possible by a new Apple patent that involves a fingerprint sensor without the need for a button.

All fingerprint sensors to date need contact with the user's skin to work. Or, to be more precise, they need electrostatic contact. Gaps between the user's finger and the sensor create either interruptions in the flow of current or blurring of the fingerprint image.

This last point is the biggest problem in the placement of the sensor (which should be under a button, not a screen). The gap created by the sensor-screen-glass set (in that order from bottom to top) is such that it makes it impossible to accurately identify the fingerprint.

Apple's patent makes use of electrostatic lenses, made of layers of contacts of different patterns that create a transfer of the vacuum generated by the distance between finger and sensor. In this way the fingerprint is accurately identified.

Now, whether this patent will make it into next year's iPhone is, of course, still a matter of speculation, but it seems that Apple is once again paving the way for something new and revolutionary. In fact, some of the concepts and technologies contained in the patent are already being used in the implementation of our familiar 3D Touch on the iPhone.

Apple already showed us the idea of the iPhone 7's non-key home button, which may prepare us for the keyless iPhone 8.

from Elichord