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

How long will it last

  • 3 years or less

    Votes: 27 61.4%

  • More than 3 years

    Votes: 17 38.6%
  • Total voters
    44
huanbrother said:
It's a forced innovation, something to give people (who are not tech savvy) a reason to upgrade.
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Actually it is an attempt to improve smartphones' absolutely horrible camera UI, classic evolutionary innovation to move to fix an existing problem. A good thing, if it helps. Like MagSafe fixed the cable issues with early laptops.

Apparently it is also something to give people (who are not camera savvy) a reason to complain.
 
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QquegChristian said:
The iPhone is portrait, it just is, and the iPhone changed the world. You can hold it landscape and you do on YouTube when you’re getting invested, but… day to day… you hold the iPhone vertically.

I say this as a director and cinematographer of award-winning movies who absolutely despised vertical video.

Now I work in marketing shooting vertical video for Fortune500 brands. What I shoot primarily goes to TikTok or IG reels. It’s meant to be viewed on your phone, held vertical. It’s a different medium but it’s still a medium. Do I want to rotate my phone every time I open Instagram? No. So we adapt.

Last week I had to film a video both vertically for TikTok and horizontally for a YouTube version and it was funny because I’ve honed vertical video so well that the horizontal version was awful. I’d adapted to telling the story in a vertical frame and had a very hard time fitting it in focus horizontally.

I would have never imagined that in the past. I’m the snooty film guy. I shot my last movie in 2:35.1 in 8k raw redcode that I only let go through 1 generation loss before the 4K master out of DaVinci Resolve.

Now I make TikToks on salary and make way more money than I ever did in actual film. The “Pro” in iPhone Pro covers a lot more use cases than meets the eye.
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By subtley making people shoot things in landscape it becomes annoying to watch on your phone and quietly kills off the idea of watching endless videos on your phone.

I don’t see how this doesn’t make the world a better place. Just because lots of people do something doesn’t make it healthy or a good idea.
 
shadowboi said:
A great way out of this is introduction of new shooting ratio like 8:7 on GoPro which is almost square, so anyone can crop it perfectly and everything that is shot with it will be always in frame. Unfortunately 16:9 is a very cropped ratio and was introduced long ago as a compromise to be able to shoot videos in higher resolution but with older image processors that could barely render 720p or 1080p
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I’m sure I remember a Motorola phone with a square sensor that could shoot landscapes in portrait orientation. I think it was this one
 
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Given how long they kept the Touch Bar around refusing to admit defeat, this could be around for a few good years.
 
DDustiNN said:
Agreed 100%. TikTok and Reels/Shorts are ruining the internet.
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For too many people they are the internet. If Apple moving a button is all it would take for some low level, subtle social engineering to make everybody’s lives better then so be it!
 
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WarmWinterHat said:
I thought the new camera button was way down on the right, about an inch from the bottom of the phone, where the mmWave antenna was?

That's nowhere near the location opposite the volume buttons.
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It is the same position when turning the phone 90° to the right to access the volume buttons, vs turning 90° to the left for the camera button. The difference I’ve noticed with the camera button is that now you have to be conscious of not covering/touching the microphone.
 
Tyler O'Bannon said:
I like it? I think all the buttons except the lock button (for hard restart purposes) will become haptic aka not real buttons but akin to the home button that wasn’t actually a button.

Cameras are an enormous feature of the phone, one of the most used.

A hardware button to accompany that hardware feature is probably not going to go away.

I believe one reason it’s there is moving forward to Apple Vision Pro, Apple wants to move people back to taking landscape photos and videos. The placement of the camera button makes it natural like a camera when in landscape, pressed on the top right with right index finger.

This will encourage people to do 16:9 spatial videos and all that.

I truly believe this is a non-spoken driving factor of it.

As we move toward AR and VR, back to full screen landscape stuff will do better and I guarantee this is something they are pushing towards internally.
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AR/VR is niche. It will stay niche as long as it's distinguishable from a pair on normal day-to-day glasses. The 16 pro will be obsolete before that happens.

Not all photos are meant to be taken horizontally. Portraits definitely aren't.
 
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gentlefury said:
Guess my hand size is just right. Feels pretty great for both.
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I think this is what people who say that it's in the wrong place are missing. Likewise, those who say the on-screen controls are better - different people will have different experiences, and Apple has just given iPhone 16 owners options.
 
Ctrlos said:
Having wandered into the Apple Store earlier today it’s certainly a talking point. Had a play on all the phones and there is no way anybody is accidentally triggering it in their pocket. It’s actually quite stiff to depress.

The contextual awareness is all over the place. You’d think that the default use from a cold start would be zoom but its exposure, something nobody really tweaks on the fly. At the same time you can’t hold to focus and then depress to take a picture! This should not be a software update but a day one bullet point.

I think they’ve tried too hard to make it into something useful. Had it sat closer to the base like it does on Xperia devices and older Lumia handsets they could have relegated focus and shutter to it, freeing up your thumbs to mess with settings. Single handed portrait users (ie teenagers) will just use the screen anyway so don’t need to be appeased.

Move it closer to the base, make it easier to focus with and not require such a hard press to take an image with. Making it lighter won’t trigger by accident. I used Sony Xperia phones for years and never had that problem.
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The biggest issue for me is the video control. I want to be able to switch to video using the camera button only, without having to fumble through the screen. Holding the camera button to record video is only used to for like 5-second videos, and you can’t even use the zoom feature. So if you want to zoom in a video, you have to hold the button and use pinch controls on screen, or use the screen to select video, then press the camera button to start recording, then half press to use the zoom slider.

Both ways are too cumbersome and almost defeat the purpose of the new button.
 
Jumpthesnark said:
Not all portraits are mug shots. Most of my favorite portraits are horizontal or square - they allow for negative space, inclusion of hands, etc.
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While true, my point is that there is a use for vertical photos.

I use vertical video a decent amount with my bouldering and rock climbing. Horizontal isn't much use because it doesn't matter what's to the right and left as much, but knowing what's above and below the climber is important. Sometimes you can get the entire climb without having to move the camera.
 
I'm an amateur runner and I like taking pics during my runs. Today, I did an easy 5 miles on Belle Isle and I was so grateful for the camera button. I was able to wake up the phone, change zoom if I wanted to, and snap a photo without changing my grip to find and press a screen button or a volume button while running. I have a Garmin running watch and I have disabled the touchscreen because sweaty or gloved fingers are no way to interact with a device during a workout. I hope this button is here to stay. I have relegated the action button to focus selection. It was poorly placed for taking pics and really not much better, or maybe a little worse than the volume buttons. In the attached photo, I stopped, dug my phone out of my running belt, woke it up with the camera button and took a picture in one smooth motion. The most important feature of my iPhone is the camera. I travel a lot and take a lot of photos during physical activity. A touchscreen is a terrible user interface during an activity, whether it's running, hiking or biking.



IMG_0008 s.jpeg
 
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DDustiNN said:
It is the same position when turning the phone 90° to the right to access the volume buttons, vs turning 90° to the left for the camera button. The difference I’ve noticed with the camera button is that now you have to be conscious of not covering/touching the microphone.
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Ironically it would have been better on the underside down from the volume controls, useable by your thumb. Easily reachable in portrait and landscape too.
 
As mentioned in a previous post, it's clear that Ive is long gone, as the engineers have usurped the design team.

Not that an evolving engineered phone with updated functional features isn't required as technology allows and advances, but the action button seemed half baked idea and just tacked on last year by engineers who frustratingly needed more functionality, and the camera control button this year is again an answer to a question no one really asked.

My guess is one of those button will be gone in 3 years.
 
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I’m not sure how I feel about the button yet. All I know is that so far I am forcing myself to use it. And I have to move my left hand fingers every time because they are in view. Crazy thought, but lenses to the middle of the back if we’re going the direction of a camera that is also an iPhone?

A camera. An iPod. A phone. And an internet communicator. Are you getting it?
 
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DonkeyWonkey said:
I found the action button to be fairly useless but this thing is on another level of pointlessness.
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I’m already finding with my new 16 pro that I love the action button for a flashlight. Really is legit useful

The only use I’ve found for the camera button though is just to launch the camera (which means I could get rid of the clunky virtual buttons on the Lock Screen, which is nice), its controls within the camera app are spectacularly bad, inconsistent, and unintuitive. It would be vastly better as a standard button if it stays that is just a second action button, the finicky slide controls are crap and it being recessed makes it a crappy action button
 
seek3r said:
I’m already finding with my new 16 pro that I love the action button for a flashlight. Really is legit useful

The only use I’ve found for the camera button though is just to launch the camera (which means I could get rid of the clunky virtual buttons on the Lock Screen, which is nice), its controls within the camera app are spectacularly bad, inconsistent, and unintuitive. It would be vastly better as a standard button if it stays that is just a second action button, the finicky slide controls are crap and it being recessed makes it a crappy action button
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This is all I’m going to use it for too and maybe it’ll be useful for that. But really I’m just going to continue using the phone the way I’ve been using it for years. We have multitouch screens for a reason. Why are we reintroducing buttons.
 
First impressions: not loving it. Specifically for video. I use the zoom regularly to pan in and out. This button is useless for that because in order to do a long slow zoom you have to lift your finger and readjust the scroll. Also the half press is annoying, takes too long to pop up, and not intuitive.

If you use the button for framing a shot before pressing the shutter, maaaayyyybe it might become useful if you get used to it.

I think I may just reprogram the button to do something else.
 
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