The next-gen Apple watch could be receiving solid state buttons that don’t move up and down but rather sense the touch of a finger, per a source close to the story.
Apple will stick with the Watch’s current button configuration, with a button and a digital crown situated on one side of the device, but neither will physically click as before. Rather than reacting to the user’s touch by physically moving back and forth, the new buttons will vibrate slightly under the fingertip, using the haptic effect Apple calls the Taptic Engine. The digital crown, though, will still physically rotate to navigate through content.
The conversion to solid state buttons for the Apple Watch is similar to the transition of the iPhone’s Home button to a solid-state design in the 2016 iPhone 7. Apple has also switched components such as MacBook trackpads and iPod control wheels from moving parts to solid-state technology.
The new buttons could be part of the new Apple Watch the company will announce this fall, or, if not, will be included in the 2019 Watch, the source said.
Apple’s inclusion of solid-state buttons will help make the Apple Watch more water resistant, as it nixes the need for a physical opening, takes up less space in the design and frees up room for a larger battery.
Apple has also been working on using the top of the buttons as sensors to gather health-related data such as heart rhythms. The heart-rate sensor on the back side of the watch does this through direct contact with the skin, but some types of measurements require more than one point of contact with the user’s skin. The top of either of the new solid-state buttons could provide that.
It’s thought that Apple’s industrial design group might be working on a future Apple Watch that has no buttons at all. Instead, the future device would have areas on the side of the device would respond to finger touches. That direction would be in line with the company’s long-held desire to streamline physical features out of its devices altogether, as seen in the elimination of the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 and the home button in the iPhone X.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via Fast Company