iPhone 5S to ditch physical home button?

The next iPhone will make a landmark break from a physical home button, rumours suggest, as Apple calls time on a feature that’s been present since its first handset dropped back in 2007. According to a report Taiwanese site Technews.tw, which was brought to wider attention by Cult of Mac, the iPhone 5S will drop a physical home button in favour of an on-screen capacitive presser. It’s not known whether the change, which flies in the face of reports that the seventh-gen iPhone will differ little from the current model, is to allow Apple to equip the handset with a larger screen. The site does disclose, however, that the new button will be coated in scratch-resistant sapphire crystal glass to make it more resistant to the kind of wear and tear that has caused problems with iPhones’ physical buttons in the past. Apple purportedly also favours sapphire glass because it is compatible with optic sensors. Industry consensus suggests that the iPhone 5S will land in September. The phone is set to be the first in which the iOS software that powers iPhones is helmed by hardware design hero Jonathan Ive. Ive is expected to usher in a new iOS era marked by a 'flatter' look and feel and less in the way of cutesy skeuomorphic icons, whereby apps resemble real life objects – for example, the current Notes app that takes on the form of a notebook.