iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 to Feature a Sapphire-Colored Capacitive Home Button
The iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 are now rumored to feature a sapphire-covered home button.
This new component will accommodate the fingerprint sensor that is also rumored to be included on the iPhone 5S, according to a report from Cult of Mac.
Apple will do away with the traditional home button in order to bring this new one in. The original button, which is featured on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch has been one of the most unreliable components on iOS devices. The sapphire crystal version is made of the extremely strong material which is only second to diamond in terms of hardness. This will prevent the component from being scratched and ruining the fingerprint sensor.
Cult of Mac retrieved this information from TechNews, a site that is not a regular source for Apple rumors. This report must be taken with a grain of salt considering its origin.
Display production for the iPhone 5S will begin in June and will be handled in large part by Sharp.
The company is one of Apple's primary display partners and it plans to begin manufacturing LCD panels for the iPhone 5S around the beginning of the summer, according to a report from Japanese newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun.
Apple was originally expected to ramp up production on the iPhone 5S in March, however, manufacturing issues have slowed the process down significantly. This was confirmed by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in April.
Kuo reported that Apple was having issues with the fingerprint sensor back in April. This caused the company to push back the launch date for the smartphone.
Apple will also launch a low-cost version iPhone that will feature mid-end specs this year, according to a new report.
J.P. Morgan analysts Gokul Hariharan and Mark Moskowitz recently spoke to AllThingsD about the low-cost model and stated that Apple will not use lower-end components to build this new iPhone. Instead, Apple will take a different approach creating a mid-range device that is a bit cheaper than the regular iPhone.