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IOS Iphone Communications Software Apple News Science Technology

iPhone 7 Home Button Now Requires Skin Contact To Work (todaysiphone.com) 167

Posted by BeauHD from the human-touch dept.
Gone are the days of pressing the home button of your iPhone with an inanimate object. With the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the home button can only be activated when in contact with skin. TodaysiPhone reports: The new "solid-state" Home button found in the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus appears to require skin contact to function. As the season gets colder, and as people put gloves on, users will quickly realize that attempting to unlock the iPhone with said gloves or with a sleeve of a shirt over your finger will not work. And with the new lock screen in iOS 10, there's no way to bring up the passcode screen without pressing the Home button. Tests have shown that using gloves designed for touch screens will get an iPhone 6s Plus to unlock but not an iPhone 7 Plus. As most of us know, the Home button in the iPhone 7 is no longer a physical button -- it sits flush and uses the iPhone's haptic feedback to give the sensation of a button press. Because the button requires skin contact, it's lead us to believe that the Home button on the iPhone 7 uses Touch ID to figure out if you're pressing the button. The report notes that Carl Hancock on Twitter was able to activate the Home button using gloves made to work specifically with touch screens. The reason (in a nutshell) why we cannot interact with the capacitive Home button when wearing gloves is because the gloves block the body's natural conductivity -- humans conduct electricity and Apple's new Home button (as well as most touch screens) has an electrical charge. On the flip side, the reason why the Home button registers our skin is because it distorts the screen's electrostatic field at the point of contact, thus triggering an action.
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iPhone 7 Home Button Now Requires Skin Contact To Work More

iPhone 7 Home Button Now Requires Skin Contact To Work

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  • So? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @02:16AM (#52906355)

    Considering that the fingerprint scanner and the screen already needed meat, what's the difference?
    To unlock you need to use your fingerprint, a password, a pin/pattern, or a slide with some meaty appendage anyway, right?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I was just thinking, the iPhone was one of the last phones that even had a physical button there. My Lumia doesn't, not many Droids that spring to mind have one...

      • Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @02:41AM (#52906399)

        My 'droid has four physical buttons: Power, home, vol up, vol down. They are reliable, provide good tactile feedback, and comfortable to use. I'd say they were ideal solutions if not for the problem of water resistance. Judging by the number of advertisments I see recently promoting phones for their water resistance, this must be a feature in some demand.

        But then my phone is also a few years old, so it doesn't reflect the latest trends. And it's got a big crack on the screen where it fell onto concrete. Still works fine though. I don't need the latest super-phone: My old Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 is two and a half years old and it still does everything I could ask of it. It also gives me the right to taunt all iPhone users about their lack of an SD card slot.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Waterproof physical buttons are trivial. Just don't let the buttons protrude through holes in the waterproof cover. Instead, put them under the cover and use a cover material soft/springy enough that the buttons beneath can be pressed with tactile feedback and all. Plenty of plastics & rubbers fits this bill.

        • Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Gussington ( 4512999 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @03:48AM (#52906513)

          I'd say they were ideal solutions if not for the problem of water resistance.

          Is this a problem? Samsung has waterproof phones with tactile buttons

        • "My 'droid has four physical buttons: Power, home, vol up, vol down. They are reliable, provide good tactile feedback, and comfortable to use."

          iPhones have also had the same four physical buttons, plus a ringer on/off. The big change in 7 is that the Home button is now a touch, like the rest of the screen, but with a vibratory feedback.

          Next bombshell: screen reflectance from the iPhone 7 causes acne.

    • Gosh, whatever will we do? Oh, wait. Problem solved. [amazon.com] Funny enough, some first-world problems have a first world solution as well.

      Can we go back to bitching about the loss of the headphone jack, or is that already passé? I think we're just trying to find things to complain about at this point.

      • The reality distortion field wins again! Yay!

        • I use an HTC One, not an iPhone. I just think the hunt for complaints has gotten absurd. And besides, "courage" was the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while, so I'm not sure the magic iField is properly affecting me.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm not gonna carry around fingerless gloves to use my phone

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          Then use a proper phone, like, say, a Motorola.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by adolf ( 21054 )

            I can use my Galaxy S7 with regular gloves. Home button, other physical buttons, capacitive buttons, touchscreen stuff -- whatever. The sensitivity is software-adjustable.

            It works fine. And it has a better IP rating than the new iPhone.

            It also has a headphone jack, and what seems like a very sensitive barometer.

            • My Note 5 works great with my Joe Rocket Flexium TX motorcycle gloves - and they are standard gauntlet gloves, not "special cap touch" models. Perfect when I want to add fuel-up information at the gas station, no need to pull off my gloves!

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by adolf ( 21054 )

                Yep.

                Same with my previous S5, though the responsiveness with gloves did leave a bit to be desired it was still able to be used.

                I'm totally not understanding the current fanboy-isms surrounding the new iPhone's issues.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Great, let's all wear gloves that leave the most frostbite-sensitive part of the hand unprotected. And while we're at it, let's all switch to crotchless pants. I hear the iphone 8 will courageously require a...*ahem*..."DNA" sample to unlock. For maximum security, you understand.

        • So many ACs are incapable of reading the summary to the end where it says "able to activate the Home button using gloves made to work specifically with touch screens". Never seen a touchscreen glove with silver threads, huh? Poor boy...

      • I have Raynaud syndrome and cannot even take food out of the freezer without gloves - my fingers, even ones I didn't touch anything with, turn ghostly white, then purple, then start hurting. Outside in the winter, even a brief exposure without gloves results in chilblain (mild frostbite) ulcers that take weeks to heal. Diltiazem helps a little, but I have still gotten chilblains while on it.

        In my case, an iPhone or any touchscreen at all is out of the question in the winter. I have an old-fashioned cel

        • Not a problem. You don't have to restrict yourself to an old-fashioned cellphone if you don't want; there's lots of great Android phones which you can use with various winter gloves made for touchscreen use (not fingerless gloves either). I recommend the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 personally; they're really inexpensive these days. But there's many, many other phones that also work. Just not the latest iPhone, so avoid that piece of crap.

    • One added value: it won't wake-up by mistake in your pocket (unless you get very happy)

    • Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)

      by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @03:02AM (#52906433)
      did you not even read the summary. even iPhone 6's and certainly my galaxy worked fine with the gloves being sold that would allow you to use finger sensitive touch screens, that no longer works. In winter on my Galaxy I can enter a pin using gloves rather than a fingerprint. that is no longer possible with a 7 apparently.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > Considering that the fingerprint scanner and the screen already needed meat, what's the difference?

      After learning that police can compel the use of a fingerprint to unlock a phone, no, I don't enable or use the fingerprint feature.

      Plus if I'm driving and I need to get my wife to unlock my phone while she's sitting in the passenger seat, it is going to be damn awkward for me and potentially illegal if I have to supply my fingerprint.

      Apple's engineers now appear to be getting lost without the direction o

      • "After learning that police can compel the use of a fingerprint to unlock a phone, no, I don't enable or use the fingerprint feature."

        If you didn't keep your Dabiq subscription app on your phone, you wouldn't need to avoid using the fingerprint. It's a huge convenience for all of us outside the tinfoil sector.

      • I don't know about other phones, but my Galaxy S5 has a fingerprint sensor, and it allows you to register multiple fingerprints with it. So you could let your wife register her fingerprint with your phone so she can unlock it herself while you're driving.

        That won't help too much with the police thing though. But you could use a different finger, and swipe it a different way or something, so that you can feign ignorance when the police try to make you unlock it for them: "look, I'm swiping my fingerprint,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rexdude ( 747457 )

        Plus if I'm driving and I need to get my wife to unlock my phone

        Android's Smart Lock feature can keep the phone unlocked when connected to a trusted Bluetooth device like your car.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malc ( 1751 )

      It's not just gloves, but situations where you have the phone behind a clear cover perhaps when you're exercising. I know the new phone is supposed to be waterproof, but that doesn't necessary negate having the phone in some sort of container and wanting to use it without removing it.

    • >"Considering that the fingerprint scanner and the screen already needed meat, what's the difference?"

      So it never occurred to you that there might actually be people who do NOT want to use the fingerprint functionality; who do not want to enroll and/or do not want their data stored or used?

      • So it never occured to you to read the post you were replying to? Or to think?
        At a minimum you need to slide your finger across the screen to unlock a locked iPhone, don't you? You ALREADY need meat to unlock in any fashion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      ... or a slide with some meaty appendage anyway, right?

      The thing is that slide-to-unlock is gone in iOS 10.

      There should be a hack to enable it in iOS 10 Beta 1, with a HowTo here [technohacker.com].
      I am no Apple sheeple that have any iOS device so I have no idea if it will work in the final version.

    • Exactly. I have a pair of glove liners with conductive fabric sewn into the finger tips. Works well enough for simple things.
      Pro tip: Have the phone memorize the print of more than one finger in case you have a bandage on your primary unlock finger.

    • I can still unlock my iPhone using skin contact, but without using my fingers. Stand by... [zzzzippp] [pause] there, unlocked. Just give me a minute to stow things away again...

  • First the 3.5 mm, now this?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17, 2016 @02:29AM (#52906371)

    Now I need to buy new headphones *and* new gloves?!

  • On every smartphone, when were you able to use (regular) gloves to interact with a touch screen smartphone?

    • Re:As the rest of the screen... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @02:45AM (#52906403) Journal

      Never, but the point is you can't even use the special gloves to do it.

      Tests have shown that using gloves designed for touch screens will get an iPhone 6s Plus to unlock but not an iPhone 7 Plus.

      • Never, but the point is you can't even use the special gloves to do it.

        Tests have shown that using gloves designed for touch screens will get an iPhone 6s Plus to unlock but not an iPhone 7 Plus.

        But TouchID didn't work either with the physical button if you had gloves on, that's why i got myself a pair of fingerless gloves to use my 6s Plus when is cold.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by phayes ( 202222 )

          Then you use this NOVEL ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE CONCEPT called a LOCK SCREEN PASSWORD to unlock it.

          Emphasis added to help the slow people among us catch up.

          • Re:As the rest of the screen... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by hyperar ( 3992287 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @05:12AM (#52906647)

            Then you use this NOVEL ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE CONCEPT called a LOCK SCREEN PASSWORD to unlock it.

            Emphasis added to help the slow people among us catch up.

            You call me slow and yet you can't figure out that the same procedure works for both old iPhones and the new iPhone 7, if you use a glove for touchscreens you can still use the LOCK SCREEN PASSWORD and use your phone regardless which one you own. If you are going to call people slow, at least make sure you're not slower.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by phayes ( 202222 )

              Hey hyperslow, I wasn't the one who wrote "TouchID didn't work either with the physical button if you had gloves on" then added "that's why i got myself a pair of fingerless gloves".

              That WOOSH noise you're ignoring is that you wouldn't need fingerless gloves with these [amazon.com] or any of the other gloves that have silver threads in them to be used with capacitive screens.

              Is that still to fast for you hyperslow?

    • I saw someone on Dragons' Den pushing special gloves that work with a touch screen. IIRC they told him to get lost.

      I'd always just assumed they didn't work with ordinary gloves, but this made me try it and mine (a low end Samsung) does. Up till then I'd been operating it with my snout for a third of the year.

      • I bought a roll of "conductive" metallic thread at Hobby Lobby, and sewed it though a few fingertips of an extra pair of my own gloves. The thread isn't very expensive, but you have to be a bit careful while sewing because it's actually normal thread wrapped with super-thin metal and can flake apart. After I was done, I dripped a bit of superglue around just the edges of my "pad". Works great.

        • I tend to wear builders'gloves - the kind with rubber/plastic dots on them. Just dug them out to test them. On some they only work with the tip (where there's no dots) - on others there are pads on the tips that work.

          I guess if it's important you should test them before you buy.

    • Well on the Galaxy S4 you could wear gloves and still be able to use the phone. :)

  • Designed in California (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @02:54AM (#52906421)

    Where it never gets cold...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by phayes ( 202222 )

      Given that you do not seem to have figured out that gloves with silver threads suffice to unlock an iPhone 7 i'd guess that you live all alone on an island in the tropics?

      • Given that you do not seem to have figured out that gloves with silver threads suffice to unlock an iPhone 7 i'd guess that you live all alone on an island in the tropics?

        Ah, yes. The once-common glove, now the new Tamagotchi.

        Celebrities in Gloves [tumblr.com]

        In our courageous new world, instead of offering to light some starlet's cigarette, the power move is to walk up say, "hey, can I swipe your seven?"

        "You, bet, buster. I was waiting for a real man to come along and recognize that not all haute couture comes with a

  • The iphone can't be appeased with a mere offering. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @03:18AM (#52906451)

    It demands an offering of human flesh to work!

  • Sometimes I need skin contact to work too!

  • Dead in Finland (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @03:28AM (#52906471) Journal

    If this is true, this product is dead, here in Finland. Alternatively, Apple fanboys will have to live with frostbitten fingers. And not even their blind dedication to the cult of Apple will carry to those extremes. Right?

  • What?!?!?!

    We must now be able to capacitively couple with a device to unlock and use it's capacitively coupled UI?

    Outrageous!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      It's almost like you didn't read anything but the headline and then proceeded to post without thinking...

      • It's almost like you didn't read anything but the headline and then proceeded to post without thinking...

        It's almost like you didn't read anything but my post and then proceeded to post without thinking...

        I read the article. You apparently, have not.

        It's almost like you think that the UI, including the one that would be brought up by a mechanical "Home" button to enter a passcode, doesn't require capacitive coupling to enter the passcode...

        So you wear the capacitive gloves, you "press" the virtual button (which can't read a fingerprint through the glove anyway), and, just as if you were using an iPhone with a

  • I saw this a few years ago so can't claim originality :)

  • That's a bigger problem than one might think (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @04:54AM (#52906621)

    After all, any hipster would put on gloves before it gets cool.

  • It's not a bug, it's a feature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thsths ( 31372 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @05:02AM (#52906635)

    To press the iHome on the iPhone, you have to use proper iGloves, approved by Apple. Now in any Apple store...

  • Also works with new Apple iGlove, yours for only $79.99.

  • Sausage Stylus! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Saturday September 17, 2016 @07:17AM (#52906943) Homepage Journal
    I heard a story a while back that there was a town where the people use sausages to operate their cell phone when it gets too cold. Having spent the last 6 months working with a mobile test automation framework, I think it would be easier to build an Arduino-powered robot equipped with a sausage and a camera. A mobile-testing abomination, part meat, part machine! Because fuck, Apple sure doesn't make it easy to test on their shit! Naturally, you'd have to replace the sausage every so often, when your sausage robot starts getting smelly. That's just a design consideration, really.

    • You could always use those little Vienna sausages. I don't think any microbe is capable of digesting them. I've seen them sitting in the open air for a long, long time without apparent ill effect.

  • As an EMT I always wear gloves on scene. There are numerous apps which are good reference sources which get used on scene. If in fact the new iPhone 7 can't be turned on while wearing gloves, there is a huge number of first responders that most likely won't be upgrading to the new iPhone.

  • More technology designed for use in a temperate location - more Californian technology for Californians.

    Outside the bubble of perfect dry weather that California tech companies live in, it rains, it's cold and you have to wear gloves, sometimes it snows and is frosty.

    iPhones you can't use with gloves or in rain, Tesla "autopilots" that can't handle snow and rain, Google self-driving cars that only work well on quiet, dry, well-marked roads, and so on and so on.

    iPads you not only can't use with gloves, but w

  • They phones get so warm you don't need gloves.

    *Tadum* *Crash* *Thud*

    Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week.

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