Two rumors don’t make a certainty, but the latest report has significant weight. Cirrus Logic is an Apple supplier and in a letter to shareholders this month (spotted by MacRumors), the semiconductor company said, “Finally, we continue to engage with a strategic customer and expect to bring a new HPMS component to market in smartphones next year.”
Sure, it doesn’t name Apple, but HPMS is a Cirrus Logic product which included haptic drivers for the iPhone’s Taptic Engine.
This follows an investor note from Barclays which points out that although we don’t have full details here, or anything like, new haptics engine capabilities would be perfect for solid state buttons, considered a possibility since the rumor in October.
That October report, by the way, came from respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, so this new leak ties in with that nicely. And Cirrus Logic has let it be known that the component is due in the second half of 2023, perfect timing for the iPhone 15 series.
It would mean that instead of the current volume and power buttons, there would be solid-state ones which don’t move but respond to the touch as though they do.
That’s like the Touch ID button on previous iPhones, or the trackpad on Mac laptops. So accurate is the haptic feedback that it’s easy to be convinced that the buttons are moving when they’re not.
Fewer moving parts is certainly a mantra for Apple, which has sought to enhance buttons with haptics for a long time—even the Digital Crown on the Apple Watch now uses haptics.
It could even mean that the buttons would sit flush to the side of the iPhone 15. At the very least, that would mean greater accuracy if you’re using the iPhone as a spirit level in the Measure app, but it would also add to the sleekness of the next iPhone flagship, likely restricted to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, if that’s what they’re called.
But while this is an exciting prospect, it raises questions. Will haptic buttons work through gloves, as the current buttons do? Will consumers really accept a phone that has not a single working button? After all, there’s something reassuring in the knowledge that if you hit a SNAFU, that pressing the physical volume and power buttons will turn off the iPhone.
And what happens if you clad your iPhone in a case? Many cases these days put buttons on the outside which press the current iPhone ones. Will that even work through a case?
For sure, Apple has thought of this and will have come up with a solution, or it wouldn’t be pressing ahead, assuming we’re reading the runes right here.
I remember being deeply skeptical of the haptics-powered Touch ID button. Until the very first time I used it. Maybe this will be the same thing.