Anyone who gets their hands on the new iPhone X will notice one little that’s missing – the home button. But don’t worry – despite it being a feature of the iPhone for 10 years – you won’t miss it.
There’s not even a virtual home button symbol on the display as we’ve seen with other smartphones that have opted to go full screen and remove all the buttons from the front of the device.
What you need to do is learn a few new gestures and you’ll be able to navigate the iPhone X like a pro.
We’re going to go through all the things you used to do with a home button but that now needs a gesture.
UNLOCKING THE PHONE
The obvious one first. To access your iPhone before you could go from the lock screen to your home screen using Touch ID to recognise your fingerprint and open up the phone.
With the iPhone X, Touch ID has been replaced by Face ID. You scan your face during set-up (it takes less than a minute) and now your face is the key to unlock the phone.
READ TECH GUIDE’S COMPLETE REVIEW OF THE iPHONE X
To unlock the iPhone X simply lift it up – the screen will then wake up – and it immediately registers your face and the padlock symbol goes from locked to unlocked in a split second.
When you pull the iPhone out of your pocket or off the table it will have already recognised your face and unlocked the device by the time you’re ready to swipe up to get to your apps.
GO HOME
Another obvious one. The home button is called the home button because it takes you to your home screen.
On an iPhone, a press of the button either took you from an app to the home screen or from a few screens in on your phone back to the main screen.
Now all you need to do is swipe up from the bottom of the display.
CLOSE DOWN APPS OR MOVE BETWEEN APPS
A double tap on the home button used to pop up all of the apps that you’ve been running so you could either move between them or swipe them up to close them down.
To do that with the iPhone X, you need to swipe up and stop halfway up the screen.
You’ll then see all of your apps gather in the middle of the screen.
To close them down, press and hold one of the apps and you’ll see a little red circle appear in the top left corner.
Now you can swipe up and close down the apps you don’t want to run in the background.
Moving between apps is also possible simply by swiping right on the home screen along the bottom edge so you can stop at the app you were recently using.
ACCESSING SIRI
You can still summon Siri by saying “Hey Siri” just like before.
The other way was a long press of the home button.
Without a home button, you use the power/lock key on the right edge which is much larger because it has so much more to do now.
A long press of this button will now bring up Siri.
APPLE PAY
Apple Pay was authorized with your fingerprint but without a home button it’s got nowhere to be recognised.
This is where Face ID comes in to play. Before, Apple Pay was triggered through the home button before reading your fingerprint and then being ready to pay.
Not it takes a double tap of the power/lock key on the right side to activate Apple Pay.
When it does that, the iPhone X immediately looks for your face and then indicates when its ready to use on the payment terminal.
We’ve found this process adds about one extra second of time. No one can be in that much of a hurry.
SCREEN SHOT
Before a screen shot could be taken by pressing home and the power/lock key.
With the iPhone X it’s now a matter of pressing the power/lock key and the volume up key.
FORCE RESTART
When the iPhone gets stuck or won’t respond a Force Restart is required which before was pressing the home key and power/lock key for a few seconds until you see the Apple symbol appear on the screen again.
Now it’s a little more complicated without a home button.
To Force Restart the iPhone X, you need to first press and quickly release the volume up key, press and quickly release the volume down key and then press and hold the power/lock key on the right until you see the Apple symbol.
The home button has been a part of the iPhone for 10 years but with the iPhone X users will find they can still easily navigate the phone, the menu and their apps.
