How to perform a hard reset on the iPhone 7 or 7 Plus

For owners of the new Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, you'll now be getting to grips with your brand new, redesigned home button which is a flat touch-sensitive sensor rather than a physical button being pushed in. It's a welcome addition but comes with one caveat: how do you now hard reset the phone?

Because Jony Ive hates mechanical parts, the old trick of holding down the home button along with the power for a few seconds no longer works. Now, should your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus freeze up and need a reset, what you'll have to do is press and hold the volume down button and the power (also known as wake) button for five seconds.

Other tricks seen on the iPhone 5 and 6 generations that used the home button, such as taking a screenshot are not affected by the new haptic home button. Briefly pressing home and power at the same time will still work for that.

The new solid-state button provides a gentle physical tap that pulses through the phone, which can be felt when doing tasks such as setting your timer to playing apps – third party developers have access to the system so games can now feedback things like gunshots or driving over rough terrain on racing titles. Expect new exciting applications coming in the near future.

While it does give the iPhone an added dimension another issue arises from this new capacitive feature, which is that normal gloves won't work on the button. For your finger to be picked up by the iPhone you'll have to wear special touchscreen-friendly gloves or none at all. The same goes for iPhone 7 smartphones in a waterproof case as the new button requires the touch of skin for it to work.