Next-gen iPad and iPhone to lose home buttons

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Next-gen iPad and iPhone to lose home buttons in favor of on-screen multitouch gestures?

As if using the iPad wasn’t already simple enough, rumor has it that Apple now plans to remove even the one and only button that the iPad has on its face, presumably because they have perfected an even better way to navigate the menus. Future versions of the iPad may not have the ubiquitous Apple home button that many users have come to know and love, and it’s all thanks to further developments in touchscreen technology and multi-touch gestures. It is said that this move will also be applied to later versions of the iPhone, which Steve Jobs had planned to not have any hardware buttons at all in the first place. Many years after the original iPhone’s launch, perhaps Steve’s dream will finally come true.

But without a home button, which some people think of as the lifeblood of the whole iPhone and iPad user experience, how are users going to get around the menus then? The answer lies on the large multi-touch screen display, apparently, as BGR reports that the reason why the iPad’s latest iOS 4.3 update adds multi-touch gestures is because it is bound to lose the home button at some point in the future. And shortly after that, a similar update can be expected to happen to the iPhone.

The information might be based on pure speculation at this point, it is said that home button-less iPads and iPhones are already being tested on site at Apple’s campus, and it won’t be long until we finally see the final versions of these devices hit the market. Instead of clicking on that single button most people have come to expect, there will be options to use new multitouch gestures to navigate menus as well as to launch the app switcher.

It’s kind of hard to imagine what using the iPhone or iPad would be without the presence of a home button. It’s pretty obvious that iOS was designed to work fully with a single home button to help operate and navigate through it so without it, it might sort of come off as incomplete. Of course, none of this has been confirmed yet by Apple so it might be something that never comes to fruition.

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