iPhone 16 Pro I predict the Camera control button will be gone in less than 3 years

[Macalway]

It's not a gimmick. It's just really poorly placed in both orientations.

On the 16 PM, in portrait it's too low. In landscape it's too far left.

The idea of what it offers is great. But the button placement is just not right no matter how you hold your iPhone.

I am super letdown. The rare iPhone hardware miss by Apple.

This is the sort of thing that is user dependent. Obviously, lots of people found it to be the ideal placement.

Having said that, they have made egregious errors in ergonomic testing, the touchbar being a prime example, so who knows.

If this is another fail in that way, well....

 

[noteple]

Some of the people all of the time

 

[Macalway]

Some of the people all of the time

What people? What are you talking about? LOL

 

[F23]

i just used it and dont like it. the fact that its a tactile button is what ruins it. if it was fully 3d touch-esque with the force presses it would be better. clicking down causes the phone to shake and produces a blurry image. should add a software option to force click and it would be way better

 

[blairh]

It’s the same distance as the volume rocker I’ve always used. I feel no difference, except being on the right side I can finally shoot portrait with my thumb instead of the awkward index finger thing I used to have to do.

The same distance doesn’t make it a good distance.

It should be an inch lower for landscape and an inch higher for portrait. It’s not ideal for either.

 

[Zaydax333]

I can see them removing it from the base phones and only keeping it on the Pro phones since those are more photography oriented overall.

I tried it out in the store today, it's... a little oddly placed. I did like using it as a shutter button and a zoom slider though.

 

[gentlefury]

The same distance doesn’t make it a good distance.

It should be an inch lower for landscape and an inch higher for portrait. It’s not ideal for either.

Guess my hand size is just right. Feels pretty great for both.

 

[klasma]

they’re focused on cameras.

Shouldn't that be the other way around?

 

[DynamicSausage]

Although I agree it's a bit of a gimmick, I've tried it out today on my 16PM and it will definitely get used. I don't think I'll "fully utilise" it the way Apple intended but as an easy to reach shutter button and zoom control for videos it's perfectly good and a great 'nice to have'.

That being said, I saw 3D Touch mentioned and that was a feature I found much more useful and I'd trade the camera control to get that back in a heartbeat.

I also saw the action button mentioned, I have to admit I use it purely as a silent/ring switch still but it's a good nice to have and could easily be programmed in future for multiple actions at a software level and it's much nice to look at and touch than the switch so I can't see that going anywhere at all.

 

[tgwaste]

I hate it.. Every time I pick up the phone I touch it and it sucks. A software setting to allow long press power button to bring up the camera and take pictures would had been way better.

 

[hagjohn]

I think once I get used to the button being there, it might be useful.

 

[MazingerZND]

i just used it and dont like it. the fact that its a tactile button is what ruins it. if it was fully 3d touch-esque with the force presses it would be better. clicking down causes the phone to shake and produces a blurry image. should add a software option to force click and it would be way better

Same here, I hate how pressing it makes the phone shake, I think this might be improved if you change its sensitivity though. Worth a try.

 

[Sami13496]

What is the need or problem that the Camera Control solves?

 

[Allen_Wentz]

You heard it from me first.

Truly a gimmick.

Just curious. Who are you to evaluate camera ergonomics? Are you a pro photog? How many tens of thousands of commercial-grade iPhone pix have you captured? How many pix have you captured with the new button?

Personally I am a pro photog, and I figure it will take me weeks to evaluate [I am slow]. But anything intended to attempt to improve on the existing awful ergonomics of all smartphones is generally welcomed. We will have to see how it works real world.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

What is the need or problem that the Camera Control solves?

The awful ergonomics of all smartphones is obvious to any competent photog. Whether or not the new button is an improvement remains to be seen.

 

[boss.king]

Admittedly I haven't tried it, but it seems like a pretty useful button for people who use the camera a lot. I could definitely see myself getting some utility out of it, unlike the touchbar that had no reason to exist and replaced useful keys.

Short of some catastrophic design failure, I don't see this going anywhere.

 

[huanbrother]

It's a forced innovation, something to give people (who are not tech savvy) a reason to upgrade.

 

[Boardiesboi]

I agree. No one asked for it

It’s in an awkward position, especially for the larger phones. Unless you have gigantic hands, you’d have to grip it in a weird way to actually press it in landscape mode. It needs to be much lower

 

[boss.king]

It's a forced innovation, something to give people (who are not tech savvy) a reason to upgrade.

Or, perhaps, it's just something that you don't find useful but others do. Maybe consider that your wants and needs are not the be-all and end-all of iPhone design.

 

[QquegChristian]

I really want to love the Camera Control button, but boy is it small. I’ve got small hands and I got the thinnest case you can get (makes me nervous it’s so thin). But even the 0.2mm dip down in the case cutout is too much and the force needed is a lot once it’s recessed like that. The button really should have extended out like every other button.

It would be 10x more useful if every single control I accidentally scroll through / zoom with just popped up on the right side of the phone in landscape with vertical sliders. So you can have your pointer on the shutter button and thumb flicking up and down on screen to zoom and change settings. It already clears the screen once you’ve activated the button and there’s a ton of real estate on the right outside of the picture preview. This is how I use my Canon 5D. Pointer finger on the shutter and thumb changing most other settings via wheels, buttons, and joystick.

With that changed they could give up on the half press, it’s the source of most of the frustration and the haptic is incredibly weak, not anywhere on par with the old solid state home button or trackpads.

As a DSLR shooter, the most exciting use case of the half press is focus, but then you realize that maybe 1 out of 1000 iphone photos I’ve ever taken didn’t focus how I intended. And if I want to focus on something really specific, the screen is perfect for that… the only reason it’s muscle memory on my 5D is cause it’s annoying to even go near the touch screen on a DSLR.

 

[updatedfruit]

Registered to comment. Upgraded from XS Max for 16PM. I finding this camera control to be a complete disaster.

Firstly the behaviour depends on context which is unpredictable.To me this a cardinal sin of intuitive design.

If phone is locked, single press= wake up screen?! Why?
If screen is on, single press= open camera.
If I want go work around this by always double tapping, then in some cases it will open the camera, and then after an eternity it takes a shot I didn’t ask for.

So straight away it’s a pain. But then if I actually want to use any of the controls, it’s extremely slow and cumbersome and very unintuitive. Firstly to actually get any control up you need to half press which is a fine balancing act that is ridiculously mysterious. Press too hard and it just takes a photo. Too little and nothing happens. And you can’t just start swiping, that does nothing either. Then once you’ve managed the half press you get the tiny panel which either shows only one control or the menu of controls. Once in one control (eg. zoom) I can’t find a way out for the life of me, without resorting to pulling back the menu on the screen. By this point you are using two hands in different ways, one with hard/soft presses, the other tapping on screen, to control a tiny crippled menu on the edge of the screen. While holding the phablet. It’s slow, cumbersome and just plain unintuitive. Meanwhile the moment has passed and you’ve lost the shot.

There needs to be options to lock it down to do one or two simple things reliably with just a couple of presses or swipes, regardless of previous state or context.

Oddly I must be the only one that doesn’t have an issue with the position of the button.

 

[updatedfruit]

With that changed they could give up on the half press, it’s the source of most of the frustration and the haptic is incredibly weak, not anywhere on par with the old solid state home button or trackpads.

As a DSLR shooter, the most exciting use case of the half press is focus,

yeah I think part of the frustration is if you are a DSLR user who hoped this could get you one step closer to that experience- it isn’t that at all. It’s not even trying to do that.

What it is, is a reimplemention of the on screen camera controls using only a single button/slider in a tiny windowed gadget.

Imagine if the original click wheel iPod had cameras. No touch screen, you had to use the click wheel for everything. Now shrink the click wheel to be a tiny slider on the side of the unit. That’s what we have here.

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

I like it but it needs more customization. I need to be able to only have settings that I actually use.

Also, for video, zooming should be fixed and continuous while you hold the swipe to produce smoother shots.

 

[QquegChristian]

I just don’t get the haptics and capacitive sliding nonsense that is crammed into too small a button to properly read our minds. Keep the shutter button and put all other controls on screen here.

 

[sky87]

I really like the camera control button so far for the quick launch/capture of photos. Haven't really tried out any of the other features besides that though.

But the quick launch/capture will be useful for me. Had a 14 Pro before and I can't count how many times I've missed a good photo or capturing something of interest because I was fumbling to turn on the camera app from my lock screen and by the time I finally launched the camera whatever I wanted to take a photo of had passed...