Apple Offers a Temporary Workaround if the Home Button Fails on an iPhone 7
With the introduction of the iPhone 7, Apple did away with the classic click-mechanism home button in favor of a "solid-state" pressure sensitive one that uses haptic feedback to mimic traditional button presses.
The programming that controls the Taptic Engine-powered feedback is deeply integrated into iOS 10, so much so that it appears Apple's latest iPhone is able to automatically offer a temporary workaround when its diagnostic software senses that the technology is playing up.
MacRumors forum member 'iwayne' shared the above picture of his iPhone 7 display after the device unexpectedly turned itself off while charging and the haptic feedback began malfunctioning after a restart. A dialog prompt warns that the home button is in need of repair, but presents an alternative onscreen home button for temporary use until the phone has been turned in to Apple for servicing.
MacRumors has previously noted that the Taptic Engine can become unresponsive if the OS freezes, which forced Apple to change the reset process for the iPhone 7 series. Apple has also apparently safeguarded against instances when the button's haptic sensor system breaks completely, but whether or not its failure rate is any better than a physical button remains to be seen.
Rumors suggest Apple will ditch the iconic home button entirely for next year's "iPhone 8" in favor of one built directly into an edge-to-edge display, but it's unclear if Apple intends to implement the same button-based recovery methods for instances in which devices freeze or stop responding completely.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
In the car, touch controls are bad for a completely different reason: because you can't find them without looking.
[doublepost=1476529947][/doublepost] Then don't post such arguments if you don't know nothing. iPhone's old physical Home Button is the part that has to be repaired the most.