iPhone 8 - What to expect from Apple's next big smartphone announcement

According to numerous reports, the next-generation iPhone - widely expected to be called the iPhone 8 - will be announced at a special Apple event on September 12.

Of course, Apple announcing a new iPhone is no surprise. It happens every year at around this time.

But you see, this year's model promises to be a bigger deal than usual. This will be the tenth anniversary of the original iPhone, and we're expecting something rather special to mark the occasion.

As you might expect, there have been plenty of rumours surrounding the iPhone 8. Here are the most noteworthy features we're expecting to see from the new phone.

Just to reiterate that these are all rumours at this point, so shouldn't be taken as nailed-on certainties.

The iPhone 7 broke the mould for Apple by not breaking the mould. By that we mean that it disrupted Apple's pattern of releasing an all-new iPhone design every other year.

Put simply, the iPhone 7 looked a lot like the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6 before it. The reason for that was widely reported to be that Apple was planning something big for the next iPhone.

Sure enough, it looks certain that the iPhone 8 is going to sport an all-new design, with glass on the front and back. The main feature, though, will be a virtually bezel-free front, meaning that there will be hardly any border around the display.

Confirmation of this was found in the form of the following icon, which was dug up from the firmware of Apple's new HomePod speaker. Numerous dummies and cases have also circulated, supposedly based on leaked measurements.

This all-screen approach will mean the end for the iconic iPhone home button. There will be no such button on the front of the iPhone 8 - although the company had already taken steps towards this by removing the physical click from the iPhone 7.

In its place will be a virtual home button integrated into iOS 11, Android-style.

You might be asking what this will mean for Touch ID, Apple's pioneering fingerprint-authentication system. Rumour has it that Touch ID will be done away with in favour of facial recognition.

That's right - your iPhone will scan your face for access and payment authentication. We've seen this before on some Android phones, but as yet it has been a little too slow and unreliable.

With more space given over to the iPhone 8's display, Apple is going to be able to massively increase the size of the screen itself without massively increasing the size of the phone's body beyond that of the iPhone 7. We could be looking at a whopping 5.8-inch example, if reports are to be believed.

This could be accompanied by a bump up in resolution, with some sources pointing to a mystery 2436 x 1125 listing found in Apple's HomePod speaker firmware. By way of comparison, the iPhone 7 Plus display comes in at 1920 x 1080.

Also, that display will see Apple finally switching to OLED panel technology. This is the type of display technology that you'll have seen in Samsung's flagship phones for years while Apple has stuck with LCD technology.

OLED displays render with much higher contrast and much deeper blacks than even the best LCD. Apple has already used this technology before in its Apple Watch (pictured below), and now it looks set to do the same for its smartphone.

Another feature that made its way into rival devices from Samsung (among others) years ago is wireless charging, and this looks like the year for Apple to follow suit.

This uses inductive charging technology rather than a port to charge your phone. You can juice your phone up simply by laying it on a properly equipped surface.

If this goes ahead, you can expect cafes and restaurants to start building this charging technology into tables - IKEA already sells some lamps and tables with such a feature built in.

This would likely be one of the major reasons for the iPhone 8 switching to a glass backed design, as inductive charging doesn't work through metal.

Last year's iPhone 7 Plus (pictured below) introduced a dual-camera system that essentially gave you a physical zoom effect - plus an enhanced depth-of-field portrait effect.

The normal iPhone 7 didn't get this, but it comes as standard in the iPhone 8. One new thing will be a new vertical alignment for those lenses.

It almost doesn't warrant a mention, but the iPhone 8 will certainly run on a faster chip than before. Going by Apple's normal naming scheme, we'll be looking at an A11 Fusion chip.

This chip should be accompanied by 3GB of RAM, which is the same amount as can be found in the iPhone 7 Plus. Reports of initial benchmark tests suggest that we're looking at a phone that'll be way faster than anything else on the market right now.

All this cutting edge technology will come at a hefty price. If reports are to be believed, the iPhone 8 will retail for around the $1000 / £1000 mark - an increase of several hundred smackers over the iPhone 7.

Feeling a little too hard up for the iPhone 8? Don't worry, Apple should have you covered with an iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus model. This will be an incremental update on the iPhone 7/iPhone 7 Plus, with a similar design and improved innards.

These more modest updates could also include the iPhone 8's wireless charging, suggesting that Apple is really pushing ahead with its port-free future plans.

Apple's WWDC event earlier in the year suggested that the company is ready to get serious with augmented reality, also known as AR.

Because of this, the iPhone 8 will almost certainly have some kind of AR-aligned feature. This could well mean a 3D laser-assisted camera.