【Dear Utol (2025): WEEK 5 HIGHLIGHTS Episode 29】

Apple messed up. Like,Dear Utol (2025): WEEK 5 HIGHLIGHTS Episode 29 badly.

The company known around the world for secrecy is having a bad week, and, unfortunately for the Apple-can-do-no-wrong crowd, it has no one to blame but itself. That's because the largest leak to come out the Cupertino-based tech giant in some time was not the result of self-proclaimed supply chain insiders taking on Reddit, but rather a good old-fashioned employee screw up.

We speak, of course, of the pre-release HomePod firmware uploaded to a public server last week. According to The Guardian, this was only supposed to be disseminated internally, but, ya know, oops.

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The firmware is full of details about the forthcoming HomePod, but it's all the non-pod related tidbits that have turned heads around the world. For example, it gave us the first 100-percent legit look at the iPhone 8 — dubbed the "D22."

Sure, it's just a silhouette of the phone's form factor, but still.

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Just this outline tells us a lot. For example, see the home button? Yeah, neither do we. The image appears to confirm speculation that Apple will soon do away with the long-standing feature on the front of its phones.

What could the iPhone 8 have in its place? A virtual home button would partially fill the void, but by itself wouldn't replace Touch ID. So perhaps a fingerprint sensor under the screen? Maybe, but more details found in the HomePod firmware suggest that Apple — at least on the next iPhone — is moving away from Touch ID in favor of a type of infrared-based facial recognition.

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Identified as "Pearl ID" in the code, the new feature would presumably shift Apple's biometric-predilection from thumb to face — allowing for purchases with just a scan of your (surely) beautiful visage.

But that's not all Pearl ID is expected to bring to the table. According to iHelp BR, the new feature will likely come with the ability to scan a face even while the phone rests on a flat surface like a desk.

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Oh, and yeah, the top of the phone. Apple is clearly racing toward a bezel-less front, and in the above image the screen seems to extend all the way up the phone. In the center you can see a cutout, which will almost certainly be where the camera is located. What will be displayed in all that extra screen real estate? At present it's unclear, but some sort of changing status bar is likely.

What other goodies were gathered by developers pouring over the code? There are quite a few, actually.

Notably, it looks like the phone will be able to record video in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. That's up from 30 fps on the iPhone 7 Plus, and is sure to be happily embraced by the vloggers of the world.

Speaking of the camera, the accidentally leaked firmware shows that the phone will come with a depth sensor. This can help make selfies even more fly, but it's also key for augmented reality. What's more, according to the iOS developer Guilherme Rambo, the phone will have something called "SmartCam" that "will tune camera settings based on the scene it detects."

So get ready for better photos.

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And while people are mostly drooling over what all this means for the next iPhone, let's not forget that this was (at its heart) a HomePod leak. As such, we learned some fun things about Apple's foray into the home-speaker game. For starters, the HomePod has a display.

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It also has some soothing sound effects.

Nice, right?

We imagine that whoever messed up at Apple HQ and uploaded this firmware with all the iPhone 8 details still intact is currently playing these tunes on repeat, silently muttering "this will all be OK" over and over again.

And it totally will! If anything, this just gives the Apple faithful more pickings to salivate over before they queue up for the glorious D22. Because that day will come soon enough, and when it does wallets will empty just as quickly as if this leak had never gone down.

But it didgo down, and that fact is perhaps the biggest reveal of all: Surprise! Even the revered at Apple slip up from time to time.

This story has been updated to include additional information about Pearl ID.

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Topics Apple iPhone