Apple's tenth-anniversary device, iPhone 8's release is still a month or so away. While the company has been largely silent about the device, it keeps surfacing in leaks and rumors. New features of the smartphone were leaked last week when developer Steve Stoughton Smith revealed the data he had found in the firmware of the company's smart speaker – the HomePod. In one of his tweets, he revealed that the upcoming iPhone would have facial recognition via a software called BiometricKit. While Apple has already announced its ARKit for developers at the World Wide Developers Conference 2017 in May, this is the first mention of the BiometricKit.

When developer Guilherme Rambo saw that Apple had released firmware for the upcoming HomePod speaker, he thought it must have been a mistake. The HomePod doesn't come out until December, after all. Curiosity piqued, he started digging through the code, where he found perhaps the last thing he expected: Apple's next iPhone. While some details regarding Apple's redesigned, high-end iPhone--called the iPhone 8 or iPhone Pro, though no one outside Cupertino knows the official name yet--had previously leaked, Rambo found in the HomePod not rumors or hints but Apple's own documentation of one of its biggest releases in years. It confirms a new look with a slimmer bezel, the death of the home button, and a powerful new face-recognition feature.