Not every day can I upgrade my phone, and I’m so glad I’ve been trading a beloved but outdated iPhone last fall for a brand new iPhone 11 iPhone 16. I’m ready to guide my in-house photographer with a better camera, thanks to the battery life every night, and for me – very exciting – it can be charged with a new Barbie pink phone. But what I didn’t expect was that a new addition would threaten my brand new phone to ruin my entire experience.
If you upgraded from an older iPhone in the past few years, you might be surprised to see two new buttons on the new device, namely the Action and Camera Control Button. The operation button is a small button above the volume regulator. It was introduced through the iPhone 15 Pro model, Customizable buttons You can do anything from turning on the ringtone to ordering coffee from dunkin’Coffee. It’s small, frustrating, and it’s its own business.
This is the camera control button that causes all the chaos.
Camera control It’s a new button on the iPhone 16 lineup that can do what the name suggests: It controls your camera. Its purpose is to help you take photos quickly and use it as a shortcut to launch the camera app. You can slide your finger through the mini settings menu to adjust the camera’s zoom. But one of the real reasons why buttons exist is: AI.
Like every other technology company, Apple has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Apple Smart Always the driving force behind most of the company’s innovations, we hope to see it as the main theme for Apple’s fall iPhone 17 Events. this “Awe” invitation Mocking at what we can expect, including a thin one iPhone 17 Air,possible. iOS 26 It also promises to bring more AI to your iPhone.
However, there is no sign of a bigger entry into the AI than the camera control button. This is the physical path to enter Visual intelligencea new AI-driven feature that allows you to use your camera to scan objects in the real world for more information about them. This sounds like a while, but it makes no sense to me, a feature I never tempted to use.
have Other use cases For the camera control buttons, including Custom button settingsas my colleagues found through the test. But that didn’t change the fact that my camera control buttons are so complete Annoying.
This is a long button, about the size of the power button on the lower right side of the device. It’s very, very easy to hit by chance. I turned on the camera while I was driving and using the navigation app, and while I turned off the phone all night, this made the camera app open and consumed the phone’s battery.
And if that’s not annoying enough, then every time I actually intend to turn on the camera through camera controls, it takes a few taps. Go to the numbers.
When I enable the camera controls, my camera volume contains such amazing photos:
I can’t tell you when or when these photos were taken by chance.
I asked you: What is the focus of the button’s work when you don’t need it and it doesn’t work when you don’t need it? There are already three ways to access the iPhone’s camera from the lock screen, which can be used literally. Camera control is a very expensive, very unreliable addition to the iPhone 16, all for AI capabilities Many people don’t need or use it. I’ve missed it since I turned off the camera control.
I realized that my grip on camera control was a small complaint in my overall positive experience with my new phone. But as an AI journalist, I can’t help but see it as an unsettling signal. So many tech companies have overhauled their software and devices to make them AI-friendly, whether it’s Google’s use of Gemini pop-up spam in every Google App, the new Copilot button on Microsoft Windows laptops, or Apple’s Camera Control button.
Tech companies are too eager to get into AI trains and their experience of whether these features are enhanced or just using their products derail our experience. And not enough to provide an exit option. Thankfully, for me and my camera rolls, Apple did it. But I hope that in the future, such a huge measure will not be necessary, as the company is more conscious of its AI-SANABLE capabilities.
If you want to join me and make your camera controls obsolete, you can navigate to iPhone settings and select camera. Then, click Camera control. Select in Camera Control Accessibilityand then Switch camera control. If you also experience excessive sensitivity, how many taps (and the required pressure) can be adjusted to trigger buttons in the same accessibility page Light pressure.
For more information, please check out our iPhone 16 Pro And ours iOS 19 Wish List.
