Is the iPhone home button a relic of the past? A recent social media post suggests it may soon be as obscure as flip phones and Blackberry keyboards.
A recent video by salon owner Lynn Cody (@lynncody4) suggests that the once familiar Apple iPhone home button has gone the way of the dodo. At least as far as the Verizon store’s young employees are concerned.
Millennials may remember the home button as a ubiquitous part of the smartphones they grew up with but facial recognition is the norm now and the old manual tech may seem as outdated as a rotary phone dial in 2025.
Cody posted a video on Sunday of her husband coping with updating his iPhone 8(!) to her TikTok account.
Since then, it’s picked up a staggering 3.4 million views from folks asking, “Does anyone remember the home button?”
Overdue for a replacement
In 2017, the iPhone 8 was cutting-edge tech. It was the last model to feature the combined home button with Touch ID, Apple’s proprietary fingerprint identification feature.
The Touch ID first debuted as part of the iPhone 5s, first introduced in September of 2013.
Apple’s iPhone X was the first phone to offer facial recognition as a standard feature. It also likely sounded the death knell of the home button—once the defining feature of the brand.
But Cody’s husband apparently had no problem with the outdated tech until recently. And his long wait to upgrade seems to have befuddled the Verizon store workers he dealt with while upgrading.
In Cody’s short video, Captioned, “Out with the old in with the new,” her camera creeps up on her husband as he attempts to buy a new phone.
The screen text reads, “My husband is finally upgrading his iPhone 8 with a home button and all the employees are freaking out because they have never seen a home button before.”
The employees appear to be young employees of a Verizon store based on their T-shirts.
“OK. So some of these aren’t even …” he says before the camera shuts off.
Where did the home button go?
When the iPhone debuted in 2007, the home button was one of four buttons on the device along with a power/sleep button, a volume up and volume down button, and a silent/ringer switch.
The home button would return the user to the home screen when pressed, a function many millennials became well aware of when smartphones became ubiquitous in the 2000s.
Over the years though, the button, once purely mechanical, became obsolete. The button became capacitive rather than mechanical with the introduction of the iPhone 7, a mere nine years after the first iPhone was released.
Two years later the iPhone X introduced the now-common facial recognition function most users use to open their phones.
Apple has long touted facial recognition as the ultimate security. Per its website, “The probability that a random person in the population could look at your iPhone or iPad Pro and unlock it using Face ID is less than 1 in 1,000,000 with a single enrolled appearance whether or not you’re wearing a mask.”
In other words, Face ID sounded the death knell of the home button.
But that said, it was still possible to have one—until this year.
The iPhone SE
According to CNET, Apple’s introduction of the iPhone 16E has ended the existence of the home button in the brand’s available products.
“Apple announced the new iPhone 16E last week, replacing the iPhone SE and eliminating the home button once and for all,” it reports.
For years, late and reluctant adopters could enjoy the retro joy of the home button. However, outside of third-party providers that era has finally come to a close.
“The home button is gone and buried unless of course, you keep your older iPhone SE models, but eventually you’ll probably update your iPhone.”
However, CNET notes that there are ways to install a virtual home button.
“AssistiveTouch, an accessibility feature that lets you control your iPhone without using any physical buttons,” it reports. “Go to Settings > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch and toggle on the feature at the top. Once you do, you should see a floating control, which is the Assistive Touch menu.”
“Go to Single-Tap under Custom Action and choose Home,” the directions continue. “To go home, press the AssistiveTouch button once, and that will take you home.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Apple and Verizon via email for a statement.
@lynncody4 Out with the old in with the new.
Viewers salute the home button
Many viewers stood in solidarity with Cody’s husband.
Commenting on the video, Amanda Ryan (@amandaryan144) wrote, “My iPhone SE will be with me until it can’t turn on anymore.”
“I miss my home button and fingerprint,” another viewer wrote.
Commenting on the long wait between updates, KF (@kf10306) stated, “This is my dad. He refuses to give up his home button. His poor iPhone can’t be off the charger more than a half hour before it dies.”
Another viewer wrote, “Still holding onto my iPhone SE with the fingerprint home button.”
And another added, “That was my problem switching over. I wanted that home button !!! Now it’s not an issue but its the change.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Cody via TikTok message and comment for a statement.
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The post ‘How have they never seen a home button?’: Man takes iPhone 8 into Verizon for upgrade. Then the workers see his phone appeared first on The Daily Dot.