Apple is a well-known company for the design of its products, extremely careful down to the smallest detail. And it’s a double-edged sword, because deciding to change those details can take months of meetings and experimentation. But it looks like that’s what’s going to happen with the iPhone 15.
Various sources relied on the renders of the iPhone 15 we saw two weeks ago to discover another detail: it seems that the volume buttons we have on the side will become a single button. It would be the first time we would see something like this on the iPhone.
Two pins, but in one button
Almost 100% sure iPhone 15 Pro will have LONG unified volume button, rather than 2 separate buttons.
When designing our iPhone 15 Pro Concept, we found that Apple uses 2 pins on each of the 2 volume buttons. The iPhone 15 Pro DAC only shows 2 pins on a longer volume button. pic.twitter.com/KzkpS9fYBB
— Daniel (@ZONEofTECH) March 2, 2023
The detail was discovered because in the renders (supposedly based on real data) we went from seeing two buttons with a lower “pin” each to a longer button with two pins on each end. This is explained by press one end of this button to increase the volume and the other end to decrease it.
This clashes with other rumours: haptic button leaks shouldn’t have these types of pins on the bottom of the buttons: what they should have are taptic motors that “joke” under the pressure of our fingers to simulate the mechanism of a button. Although it may well be that the haptic buttons are reserved for the iPhone 15 Pro, the source of the tweet thinks otherwise, but remember that we are still talking about rumors.
It may sound like a joke, but going from two buttons to one is not has several implications. There are fewer parts, so less manufacturing cost. And if there is a gain in interior space thanks to the need for fewer parts, we can even gain a little more autonomy. These are big effects hidden in a very small change. And who knows, maybe design-wise, seeing fewer buttons on the sides helps the iPhone look more streamlined.
Picture | Arun Prakash
