iPhone 8: As Apple gears up to release new handsets, mystery remains over what they will actually be called

We know pretty much everything else about the new phone

(Getty)

A great deal has been leaked about the new iPhone. But there’s one central mystery: what everyone’s actually going to call it.

“The new iPhone” is in itself something of a misnomer: there’s actually going to be three new iPhones, all rumours suggest. That will be two models in keeping with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which mostly focus on better internal components, as well as a completely new and re-designed phone.

With such a complicated line-up, discussion has turned to what exactly the phones will be called. And a number of different possibilities have formed.

Until now, rumours have focused around one consensus. The three phones will be called the iPhone 7s and 7s Plus – which both will look almost identical to the 7 – and the iPhone 8.

But new rumoured phones seem to suggest that the non-premium models will actually look different to the current iPhone 7. They will include glass backs, for instance, according to a new leak from 9to5mac.

Apple blogger and expert John Gruber said that if the phone does look different from the 7, Apple almost certainly won’t call it the 7s. In fact, a whole new naming scheme might be introduced, he suggested on his blog, Daring Fireball.

“If these are legit, there’s no way Apple is going to call these devices “7S”,” he wrote. “The S models have had minor cosmetic differences from the preceding year’s non-S iPhones, but these phones are sporting entire new designs.”

He said that naming the phones 7s would also lead people to believe that the phones were only receiving modest updates. But it’s likely they will get major technical improvements, he suggested, and so Apple might give them a name that suits.

He suggested two different naming schemes: iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 8 Pro, or iPhone, iPhone Plus, iPhone Pro. “Either of these naming schemes would make all three new iPhones sound new,” he wrote.

The second system would also get rid of the need to number the phones. It doesn’t use that naming system in any of its other products – including the iPad, which used to but has over time lost its numbering – and there have been repeated suggestions that Apple could be looking to get rid of it for the iPhone, too.

If Apple didn’t use the “s” name, it would be the first time since the very first iPhone that a handset didn’t get followed up by an s model. But rules are going to be broken this year, whatever happens: the company has never released more than two versions of the same phone at once.

(For the first time, as of the most recent generation, Apple has three "current" phones on the go: the iPhone SE and the 7 and 7 Plus. But those phones weren't all launched at once.)

Either way, it will be all but impossible to say what the new phone is called, right until it launches. That’s because the branding of the phone takes place only in Apple’s offices and among a limited number of people – unlike the creation of the phones, which happens far away and in a less controlled manner – meaning that it’s harder to leak and that it could easily be changed right up until the last moment anyway.

One possibility is if Apple accidentally leaks the name itself, like it did with a whole range of the iPhone 8’s features, by posting software online for the public to find. But that software – which has even revealed the design of the new phone – refers to the new model only as “D22”.