Artist renderings of the new iPhone 8 happen on a nearly weekly basis at this point. Some based on repeated rumors and others based on hopes and dreams. However, most of these renderings usually don't go beyond the physical design of the phone.
That is not the case with Gabor Balogh's latest mock-up of the rumored iPhone 8. He takes it one step further to also conceptualize what Apple Maps might look like with a touch of AR. In fact, we already know that in the iOS 11 beta there are some hidden ARKit Easter eggs which I believe are just scratching the surface of what could be possible.
Read also: New leak shows iPhone 8's fingerprint reader on the back
We know that Gabor Balogh's renderings are very possible because some developers have already begun to incorporate ARKit and other technologies to make mapping on iOS more spatially aware. We also know that ARKit is going to work on millions of iPhones whenever an application is built using ARKit.
ARKit + CoreLocation, part 2 pic.twitter.com/AyQiFyzlj3
— Andrew Hart (@AndrewProjDent) July 21, 2017
Ultimately, ARKit and its ability to work without any added hardware is Apple's secret weapon. This will likely be accelerated by the iPhone 8 and the anticipated narrow bezel display that will almost seem like it's not even there. This should help the immersion for AR and make the user feel more connected with the application.
ARKit + CoreLocation pic.twitter.com/nTdKyGrBmv
— Andrew Hart (@AndrewProjDent) July 17, 2017
Running AR smoothly is no small task, so we can probably expect another major performance boost with the iPhone 8, again.