iPhone 8: Photos claim to show new Apple handset, including radical new redesign

The first photos of the iPhone 8 might just have been leaked.

The images – which are unverified, but are claimed by those sharing them to show a phone made as a prototype of the new handset – show a redesigned phone that includes many new features but takes much of its lead from the iPhone 7.

The new phone is already being said by some rumour-mongers to be the most radical redesign that the iPhone has ever had, to mark its 10th anniversary. Apple hasn’t officially said anything about the new handset, and never does.

The phone shown in the pictures includes all of the primary hardware features of the iPhone 7, and those that came before it. It has the same volume buttons, rounded rectangular design and a power switch, though that has been lengthened and extended down the side.

Perhaps the biggest change to the physical design is the long camera hole that now stretches down the phone. Apple made that camera opening a large oval for the first time with the iPhone 6s – which includes a dual lens camera setup for taking deeper pictures – but those have now been rotated so that they move down the back of the phone.

The back of the phone also doesn’t include the Apple logo that has featured on the back of every iPhone since the very first one. But that’s likely because the phone shows a prototype model – if it is real – and it’s very unlikely indeed that Apple would ever remove that branding from the phone’s physical design.

The new phone will be the same 7.1mm thinness and roughly the same physical dimensions as the iPhone 7, according to existing leaks. That’s despite suggestions that it would instead see a change in size, to accommodate the same size edge-to-edge screen but trim some space off the side of the phone.

The phone doesn’t appear to have any discernible bezel on the sides of the display. But that might be because it doesn’t have any screen inside of it at all.

There’s no guarantee that the pictures show the real phone that Apple will choose to go with, let alone whether or not the photos actually show a prototype that is being worked on at all. But they chime with many previous rumours about the handset, showing what the phone may look like even if the source itself was not legitimate.

Apple is expected to unveil the new iPhone in September. But it might take much longer than that to get hold of it, according to new reports, which suggest that the phone might be delayed or at least severely supply constrained perhaps until early 2018.