It’s long been rumored that Apple is preparing a significant revamp of iOS 7, complete with a new flatter design overseen by Jony Ivy – and Tim Cook only strengthened such claims by confirming that Ive was indeed a key contributor to the next version of iOS. Today, iDownloadBlog has posted what might be the first actual screenshot of iOS 7, which shows how some of the flattening might appear.
The claims are backed up by 9to5Mac, which has a decent reputation when it comes to pre-release Apple software, stating that “things have [apparently] changed a lot ” since the image was captured. iDownloadBlog posts a clarified version of the image, which was created by removing the top layer of gloss from the icons. The result is a set of home screen icons that do indeed appear “flatter.”
The site also offered an assessment describing the blurry screenshot, and offering some assessment of what the image might mean:
What does that mean for parts of the UI such as app icons? Our friend Sonny Dickson got his hands on a blurry screenshot showing the Home screen of an iPhone running iOS 7. The image quality is terrible, but with the help of talented designer Surenix, we were able to reproduce some of these icons to give you an exclusive look at what some stock app icons on iOS 7 might look like.
If we had to describe the changes in one word, that would be: unified…
When you look at the current state of stock apps icons, it seems that all of them were designed by different teams. Most of them have a different look. They don’t have unified features that tie them all up together. Some of them have a gloss effect. Some of them don’t. Some of them have borders. Some of them don’t, etc…
From what we’ve seen, we believe Jony Ive’s touch on iOS 7 will homogenize the look of Apple’s stock apps icons.
The site goes on to list an exhaustive series of changes that they have observed from the leak, especially in relation to how it differers from current versions of iOS. While the legitimacy and recency of the image are both completely unverifiable, it nevertheless remains an interesting look at what we might see.
Personally, I’d wager the changes will be a bit more significant than just some “flattened” icons – but we’ll likely see for ourselves when Apple shows off the update at WWDC!
