HomePod Firmware Leaks More iPhone 8 Specs, Apple Smart Speaker Screen, Processor

The briefly available HomePod firmware last weekend did not only contain information on the smart speaker’s specs and features, but also details about Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8. While everything that’s known so far about the next-generation iPhone is from various leaks and rumors, what the firmware has is the real deal. Thus, the discovery made by developers recently through their close examination of HomePod’s firmware could pertain to the official specs of the next Apple flagship phone.

On Monday, developer Steven Troughton-Smith took to Twitter to disclose that upon checking the firmware codes, he learned that the next flagship iPhone would pack in a 2436 x 1125 screen resolution. This resolution is quite bigger than the one that came with the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus last year. The larger brother of the iPhone 7 sports a 1920 x 1080 resolution with 401 ppi pixel density.

Troughton-Smith also pointed out that though the iPhone 8 would come with a taller screen, it’s not designed to fit the same kinds of content onscreen as the iPhone 7 Plus. He also challenged what KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said about the iPhone 8 sporting a 5.8-inch OLED display that includes a 290-pixel function area at the bottom, leaving only 5.15 inches of screen estate for displaying content and the home screen. According to Troughton-Smith, this does not make sense for the screen resolution he uncovered (equivalent to a 5.15-inch screen) already includes the bottom function bar.

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If the iPhone 8 does debut with a 5.8-inch display, it would offer a much larger screen estate than the iPhone 7 Plus despite only coming in a body that’s similar in size with the 4.7-inch iPhone 7. Also, it remains to be seen if developers will be able to extend their apps into the function area of the new iPhone flagship should the device really come with the separate area dedicated for primary functions, as pointed out by Apple Insider.

Another developer, Guilherme Rambo, also revealed another interesting discovery about an “attention detection” feature on the iPhone 8. It wasn’t clear what this is for, but one techie commented on Rambo’s tweet that this feature could potentially allow the device to give notifications to the user silently when it detects the user gazing on its display.

Rambo was also the one who divulged that the HomePod firmware included strings for the iPhone 8’s rumored 3D facial recognition technology. “I decided to search for strings inside the firmware that could be related to the rumored ‘Face ID’ feature. I searched for the word ‘face’ and noticed it matched several symbols in BiometricKit, the framework that currently handles Touch ID,” he told Wired.

ALSO READ: Apple partnering with LG Display for future iPhones’ OLED screens

Meanwhile, apart from containing Easter eggs for the iPhone 8, the firmware also carried important information about Apple’s Amazon Echo competitor. MacRumors learned from developer Avery Magnotti that the HomePod comes with a 272 x 340 display that shows a visible multicolor LED waveform when users are interacting with digital assistant Siri.

The display apparently blends seamlessly with the top of the device, so it isn’t really noticeable when the speaker is off. This display is also responsible for showing virtual buttons that users can control to make some adjustments on sound volume and other features. As previously reported, the screen is also believed to display certain symbols and shapes when users are accessing certain functions of the device.

Finally, some digging on the firmware also revealed that the HomePod would come equipped with 1GB of RAM and Apple’s A8 chip. Both of which are present in older iOS devices. For instance, the A8 chip is the same processor that’s powering the 3-year-old iPhone 6. And despite the smaller RAM compared to the one that newer iOS devices sport, the 1GB RAM is said to already be an overkill for the functions of the upcoming HomePod.