A parts supplier for Apple has seemingly confirmed rumours that Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro will ditch physical buttons.
Rumours regarding a buttonless iPhone surfaced in October when analyst Ming-Chi Kuo pointed to the removal of mechanical volume and power buttons from Apple’s best iPhones.
Cirrus Logic CEO John Forsyth told an earnings call that his company was working on a new component, previously confirmed to be component related to Apple’s Taptic Engine vibration motors, for the “back half of next year”.
Putting two and two together, Barclays analysts Blayne Curtis and Tom O’Malley stated that Apple’s button-less iPHone 15 Pro is now more real than ever.
“When looking at potential use cases, the largest change in new iPhone models next year is the removal of the buttons, which would require additional drivers for the haptics engine, making it the most likely use case for new content,” the pair said via an investor note seen by MacRumors.
Moving to solid-state volume and power buttons would give iPhone 15 Pro the distinct advantage of being more water-resistant than older models.
The removal of physical buttons would effectively seal up the iPhone in ways not possible otherwise, preventing water from finding its way in.
As per its usual release patterns, we can expect the company to announce the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models in September of 2023.
