By Dan Moren

September 30, 2016 2:09 PM PT

The Back Page: Top 5 features I want on the iPhone 8

Look, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are old hat. They’ve been out for a few weeks now, and really, what more is there to say about them? Jet black, blah blah, great camera, blah blah, waterproof, whoop de doo. Great, fine. Time to move on. Let’s talk about what we really want: the iPhone 8. I’ve painstakingly compiled a list of the top five features that I’d like to see on Apple’s next phone, which, as we all know, will be the phone that we deserve—until the iPhone 9 shows up, anyway.

1. Fireproof: The iPhone 7 is waterproof and that’s great if you go swimming with it, or take it into the shower, or try to skip it off the lake like a flat rock. But there are way more dangerous things out there than water. Lava, for example. If my next iPhone isn’t able to withstand heat up to 500° then Apple has failed. What good is a phone if I can’t drop it into a volcano, “accidentally” bake it in my oven for 30 minutes with cheese sprinkled on top, or leave it sitting next to a Galaxy Note 7?

2. Cutting-edge design: I’m not just talking about the fact that the iPhone 7 looks like the iPhone 6s or the iPhone 6, I’m talking literally. Why do I have to carry my smartphone and a knife? The thing’s going to keep getting thinner as long as Jony Ive continues his endless battle against the forces from the second dimension, led by his archrival: Mark Papermaster. (There you go, Apple executive fanboys—that’s a deep cut. If you will.)

3. Fewer buttons: By my count, the iPhone 7 still has at least three more buttons on it than necessary. I’m not saying that we should eliminate all of the iPhone’s buttons—that would be ridiculous. But one button ought to be sufficient for everything you want to do. Press it once to wake or lock the phone, twice to switch from ring to silent, an alternating pattern of long/short long/short to increase the volume, and an alternating pattern of short/long/short short/long/short to decrease the volume. Simple. I don’t know why Apple hasn’t already thought of this!

4. Even blacker black: What’s better than two different shades of black? Three different shades of black. Jet Black is lovely, from what I’ve heard, but what with the worries about microabrasions, it’s clear it’s not going to stand up to Apple’s high standards. So one more shot at this: Void Black. A black so black that if you drop it in the middle of the night you’re just going to have to buy a new phone, because that one’s gone, man. So black that even Spinal Tap will have to admit that their album cover is just slightly gray-ish. So black that if you stare at it long enough, you won’t even be sure which side of the phone you’re actually on anymore. And here’s the best part: As you gaze into the Void Black iPhone 8, it also gazes into you!

5. 17 headphone jacks: But only one of them works, and it’s random each time.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Twitter at @dmoren or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. The latest novel in his Galactic Cold War series of sci-fi space adventures, The Nova Incident, is available now.]