Apple adds 'police button' feature to iPhones

Apple's new operating system will come with an option to lock your iPhone's fingerprint scanner and bring up a hotline to the police.

The 'Emergency SOS' feature was uncovered by programmers with access to the beta version of iOS 11. 

They found that TouchID was temporarily disabled by rapidly hitting the power button five times. 

This means that users could not be forced to unlock their phones by attackers or thieves.

The feature will be available on new iPhone models when i0S 11 is publicly released later this year, the Daily Mail reports, citing The Verge.

It could be a desirable asset for iPhone 8 buyers, which is rumoured to offer facial recognition unlocking.

However, concerns have been raised over the potential for users being forced to unlock their phones using facial recognition. 

Emergency SOS will allow the person using it to quickly disable the instant-unlock capabilities, should they believe someone might try and forcibly bypass their phone's security. 

The iOS 11 operating system is expected to be released alongside the iPhone 8 in September.