The Economic Daily News, via Digitimes, has reported that Apple will in fact use a new optical fingerprint sensor technology to embed a Touch ID sensor in the front of the OLED panel. The EDN cites Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as the source of the information.

TSMC is responsible for developing the new A11 processing chip that will no doubt feature in the iPhone, so the source is a good one, but it does of course contradicts several other reports that suggest the iPhone 8 will have a rear-mounted Touch ID scanner.

It was thought up until now that the technology to embed a sensor in the screen wouldn't be able to be produced on such a large scale. It seems that truth be told, nobody knows for sure what will happen until the new iPhone is held aloft on stage.

The sensor will show up on the screen as a virtual home button, where you will just need to place your finger, or thumb, whichever you have assigned, to unlock the phone and authorise payments.

The report also mentions an infrared sensor on the front of the phone, which will be used for facial recognition functions. This is something we've heard before, so it's good to have another source add some weight to the rumour.

The iPhone 8 is expected to have an edge-to-edge display, similar to the Infinity Display on the Galaxy S8 phones. It will even allegedly sport the same aspect ratio as its Samsung rival, changing from 16:9 on the iPhone 7, to an 18.5:9 ratio instead.

We initially expected the iPhone 8 to launch alongside the iPhone 7s and 7s Plus at Apple's usual September keynote address, but reported issues with the production of OLED panels may push it back to November.