While Apple offered iterative improvements on this year's iPhone 14 lineup, we might see some major changes on the iPhone 15 series next year. Apple recently confirmed it will ditch the Lightning port on future iPhone models, and the iPhone 15 series could be the first to launch with USB-C ports. In addition, Apple could drop the physical power and volume buttons on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, according to a recent report from renowned Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo claims that Apple could "adopt a solid-state button design (similar to the home button design of the iPhone 7/8/SE2 &3) to replace the physical/mechanical button design" on two high-end iPhone 15 models. The new solid-state buttons will reportedly come with additional Taptic Engines to provide haptic feedback on button clicks, like the Force Touch trackpad on recent MacBooks, increasing the number of Taptic Engines used in each iPhone from one to three.

Kuo further adds that Android OEMs will likely adopt a similar approach on high-end flagships following Apple's announcement. However, it's worth mentioning that Apple won't be the first to replace physical buttons on its smartphones. Before its untimely demise, LG was working on two buttonless smartphones -- the canceled LG rollable and the LG Velvet 2 Pro. Both devices featured pressure-sensitive pads instead of physical buttons to control the volume and turn the display on or off. HTC's U12 Plus from 2018 also took a similar approach and offered pressure-sensitive buttons instead of physical power and volume buttons. However, HTC's implementation wasn't great and users reported facing issues with the button sensitivity. We expect Apple to deliver a more robust solution on the upcoming iPhones.