Smart Invert (or Dark Mode), Home button and video on iPhone 8 with iOS 11 — Concept

4 min readJun 12, 2017

Smoke and mirrors

How iOS 11 could blend the user interface into the phone to minimise visual breaking points, especially around the top section of iPhone 8. There are three ways to do this. Even though most mockups tend to show iOS 11 using maximum screen real estate (left), I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple defaulted to subtle ways to blend the screen into the edges using fade-outs or simply making the top bar black. As mentioned previously in my post about the iPhone without borders, every classic layout reminding the users that they are interacting with a rectangle will be an unnecessary way of taking them out of the experience, even for a microsecond. Doing this would be true to Apple’s philosophy of blending perfectly software and hardware.

Adieu Home Button

The Home Button functionality could evolve and change to becomes the right button, consistent with Apple Watch crown. This could explain why rumours of the iPhone inexplicably show a longer designed button on the right-side compared to previous versions of iPhone.

During the day

The user interface would look like it is now, but so much better while cementing the card trend approach, making apps always more immersive, with less focus on a top navigation bar which had always been hard to reach anyway.

After Sunset

Going dark could reduce eye strain at night, while saving on battery life. Personally, I don’t think Dark mode will ever be default as it alienating for people who are used to the look and feel of iOS since the iPhone was introduced, and also more generally the idea that black text goes on white background, since monks started copying books. That said, battery saving would be a compelling argument to jump ship.

Different orientation, different user goals

While portrait mode could allow for users to ‘sacrifice’ the corners of the video they are watching, we could imagine that the treatment would be different for a landscape mode, in which case, the video is not cropped, but the sides of the screen would go to black (by default), to maximise the video. This could be imagined as the videos meant for portrait or landscape are different in nature and in user goals. Portrait: quick watch in Instagram Stories, Snapchat, Facebook. Landscape: prolonged watching in Netflix, movies, etc.