The iPhone is more than twelve years old now. The first generation of the phone being released in 2007 and unveiled by the company co-founder and then-CEO Steve Jobs. Since then, the iPhone has gone through various changes in its design, the build, the internals, and much more. However, the home screen of the iPhone which is a grid of icons with a dock at the bottom has remained largely unchanged.
If the first generation iPhone and the latest iPhone 11’s home screen is compared: the only difference would be minute changes in icon designs and the addition of the software home gesture button on the iPhone 11. Over the years, there have been multiple rumours about a refreshed home screen but that never happened.
Home screen refresh (F5?)
So the big question here is whether Apple will ever tweak the design of the home screen and if yes, then when? Till this year, both the iPhone and the iPad have largely shared the same software. However, starting this year, iPads will run iPadOS which has a slightly tweaked home screen. The company has added widgets to the home screen to take use of the big screen.
Similarly, we expect Apple to make some changes to the working of the home screen on iOS. Also, another interesting point to note is that the last major update to iOS’ design was in 2013 with iOS 7. Apple refreshed the design of iOS only once after six versions based on the original theme. This year marked six years of iOS 7 styled design and we expect Apple to make major changes to the OS that power the iPhone.
Finally, iPhones with new design!
Also, the iPhone X design will be three years old by next year and we expect Apple to release a new design for the iPhone. Next year seems to be the best time for the company to refresh the software side of design as well.