Despite the constant rumours and speculation leading up to a new iPhone model being released the company does normally manage to keep something up their sleeves, unless of course a handset is left in a bar somewhere. Now though there are reports about the launch date of the iPhone 5S as well as some home button features.

While there has long been talk that Apple will provide a minor upgrade to this year’s iPhone along with the possibility of a budget model, it seems that the company will be adding some new features to the device.

It seems like ages ago now that we first heard talk of the iPhone 5S featuring some sort of fingerprint technology, and now it seems this could be happening and be a part of the handsets new home button.

KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has long been considered to be well connected with Apple and has been pretty reliable in the past, and is now claiming that the new home button will be of a convex shape instead of the usual concave, and this is to fit in a fingerprint scanner that will also be protected by Sapphire Glass which is currently found covering the camera lens of the iPhone 5.

Using the Sapphire Glass according to Kuo will protect the scanner from any scratches that would render the feature useless. The company that Apple gobbled up last year, AuthenTec, uses a different form of fingerprint scanning than other systems and shouldn’t be affected by dust.

The analyst feels that the home button is the perfect place to put a fingerprint scanner as users won’t get confused where to place their finger to open up the handset. It is felt that this feature will help Apple gain some market share from Android with the iPhone 5S, but it remains to be seen if such a feature will concern many smartphone users and we have already heard that Samsung is also working on such a feature.

There are also claims that the iPhone 5S will make its debut on September 10th which is only six days after the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 event, and the Sony Honami that could also be appearing on that date following a leak.

Are you bothered about owning a smartphone with a fingerprint scanner?

Source: AppleInsider.