The new home buttons dont feel like actual button clicks at all. It feels like the iPhone is clicking, not the button. This was especially disconcerting at first. In the hands-on area at the event last week, when everyone was experiencing it for the first time, reaction was overwhelmingly negative. Five days later, Im getting used to it. But I dont think Ill ever like it as much as the actual clicking Touch ID home button on the iPhones 5S through 6S.
iOS offers three settings for haptic feedback on home button clicks. Apple labels them 1, 2, and 3. They correspond to low, medium, high. Medium is the default, but you get to choose during the initial first run on-boarding process. I think I prefer the highest setting, 3.
The first few days I was using these phones, I found myself accidentally triggering Reachability a few times per day. Thats the feature where you tap not click, tap the home button twice to bring the top of the screen to the bottom, to make it easier to each tap targets at the top of the screen. It only happened to me once today, so I think Im getting used to it. (I never use Reachability, but I didnt want to disable it (yet) because I wanted to see if it was a problem that would go away as I acclimated to the new home button.
This new home button is the one and only thing about the iPhone 7 that I dont like. Why would Apple do this? It does remove one more potential point of ingress, improving water resistance. But the power and volume buttons are still actual buttons, and the iPhone 7 is IP67 water resistant. To me, it feels worse, not better. I could wind up in the minority on this point, but hands-on room feedback was on my side, and, well, I consider myself a connoisseur of button clickiness.
