The HomePod is Apple’s crack at the smart speaker industry which would rival the Google Home and the Amazon Echo. This latest smart speaker won’t be available until December but Apple mistakenly released an update for the device. However, this isn’t the bad news for Apple, as the firmware that was released contained details about the company’s upcoming flagship smartphone – the iPhone 8.

This mistake by Apple is very reminiscent of the time the iPhone 4 was leaked in 2010, when an Apple software engineer accidentally left a prototype of the device in a bar in Redwood City, California.

This time, the details about the next iPhone were revealed by a couple of iOS developers, Steve Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo, both of which have decrypted the firmware intended for the HomePod.

Here are the things they found out about the iPhone 8.

A new facial recognition system called Pearl ID

There’s seems to be a new infrared camera with facial recognition to be installed at the top of the display, possibly called Pearl ID.

The firmware apparently made several references to face recognition, in addition to the infrared, which is also capable of recognizing a person’s face. This type of camera can also distinguish a flat picture of a person if someone would try to trick it to unlock the device.

The iPhone 8 having no bezels is almost confirmed

We have seen a lot of concept images of the iPhone 8 for the past several months now.

All those images have one thing in common, no bezels.

However, according to Troughton-Smith and Rambo, they have discovered that the next flagship won’t be having bezels, confirming the speculations.

Check out the clip below to see the new outline of the device.

No more home button for the iPhone 8

If you have seen the clip from above, you will also notice that there isn’t any room for a physical home button.

The code below practically says “zero” next to the “deviceHasHomeButton” line. Instead, the device will have a “home indicator.” It’s a virtual home button that only appears when needed and probably similar to the Assistive Touch feature.

Moreover, Troughton-Smith claims that there will be a Tap to Wake feature on the device, something that Android smartphones have for quite some time now.

The fingerprint scanner is still a mystery

With all of the digging Troughton-Smith and Rambo have made, they still couldn’t tell whether the iPhone 8 will feature a fingerprint scanner.

There is also no evidence that the Touch ID will be embedded underneath the display. Perhaps Apple might decide to put it at the back of the phone instead.
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