https://www.macworld.com/article/1783293/iphone-15-pro-physical-button-design.html
Ming-Chi Kuo reports that the switch to solid-state buttons isn't
happening.
It looks like one of the most significant design changes in this year's
iPhone refresh has been called off.
In a Medium post today, the respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple no
longer plans to use a solid-state button design on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15
Pro Max.
"My latest survey indicates that due to unresolved technical issues before
mass production, both high-end iPhone 15 Pro models (Pro & Pro Max) will abandon the closely-watched solid-state button design," he writes, "and
revert to the traditional physical button design."
As long ago as October 2022, rumors pointed to the Pro versions of the late-2023 iPhones having solid-state power and volume buttons, and the
theory was largely accepted as fact up to this spring. (We discussed their likely implications in a cost-benefit analysis last month, for example.) Indeed, it was Kuo himself who initially propagated the rumor, albeit with
the inclusion of the classic caveat word "may."
In other words, the buttons wouldn't physically press inwards, but instead,
use a haptic mechanism to mimic the feel of a click in response to pressure
and skin contact. It appears this approach is proving difficult to execute.
Apple did something similar back in 2016 when the iPhone 7 was launched
with a solid-state Home button. The idea was that ditching a moving part reduced the likelihood of mechanical problems: in previous iterations, the
Home button had been one of the most fault-prone parts of the iPhone.
But the new design was not universally loved either; we called it "odd" and "weird" at the time, and its inability to work with non-capacitive gloves
has been an issue with the iPhone SE.
Furthermore, using a static design on the power button, specifically, is
more challenging than on the Home button. Such designs need power; if
you've powered off one of Apple's recent MacBooks, for example, trying to
press the solid-state trackpad is like pressing a flat and unresponsive
slab of aluminum. Yet the power button obviously needs to be able to do its
job when the iPhone is off.
It's unclear if that is the "unresolved technical issue," or if the rumor
was off to start with; the cynic might observe that it is rather convenient
for Kuo to be able to grab headlines twice, first by starting a rumor and
then by killing it off.
But Kuo is generally well informed, and as he notes in the Medium post,
there is still time for Apple to change its mind.
"The iPhone 15 Pro is currently in the EVT [Engineering Validation Test] development stage," he writes, "so there is still time to modify the
design."
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