IPhone 7 Home Button Now Requires Skin Contact To Work

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus users are discovering that their Home buttons may be rendered useless come wintertime (via Daring Fireball). 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 (via MacRumors) that using gloves designed for touch screens will get an iPhone 6s Plus to unlock but not an iPhone 7 Plus. A user on Twitter has gotten these pair of gloves to get the phone to register, suggesting that some types of gloves do work, but most won’t.

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 contacts, 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.

While unlocking your iPhone 7 with gloves will be nearly impossible, iOS 10’s “Raise to Wake” feature still allows users to gain access to their Lock screen without physically pressing any buttons. Unlocking the device, however, will require skin contact.

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