Summary
- Camera Control adds complexity, but its designated role as a camera controller limits its functionality.
- Apple could add utility to the iPhone by assigning it to a broader list of responsibilities.
- Camera Control is similar to more capable buttons on phones like the Asus Zenfone 9.
In retrospect, Apple’s iPhone 16 was far more iterative than it might have seemed at launch. The phone’s ability to use Apple Intelligence features was sold as a meaningful change to the experience of owning an iPhone, but it really hasn’t mattered. Some of that is due to Apple’s bungled rollout of its new features — notification summaries were pulled and Siri was delayed, for example — but it also extends to the hardware of the device itself. Few of the design tweaks of the iPhone 16 have made an impact, and Camera Control might be the best example.
Camera Control is an entirely new button for controlling the iPhone’s camera (and at least one other feature that relies on camera input, Visual Intelligence) that, if anything, makes taking photos more complicated. It has nothing to do with Camera Control or how it works, and everything to do with Apple’s decision to limit the button to the camera in the first place.
Camera Control is a different kind of shutter button
It’s a lot more sophisticated than on and off
As a company, Apple has historically preferred to reduce and streamline rather than add-on extraneous new features to its products. It decided to remove the headphone jack from its smartphones, and eliminate all but the bare essential ports on its laptops and desktop computers. You couldn’t easily call Apple minimalist, but it certainly has tendencies. The rare exception to that trend has been things like the Action Button. Technically, it’s a replacement for the Ring / Silent switch that has been on iPhones for decades, but it can be customized to do plenty of other jobs, a meaningful example of Apple adding complexity to its star product.
Camera Control falls into that bucket too. It crowds yet another part of the iPhone’s slender body, and a surprising amount of technical innovation goes into making it capable of multiple different types of interactions. But even if it does a lot, its designated role as camera controller also leaves it surprisingly limited. It’s worth noting that Apple is very careful to never refer to Camera Control as a button.
It can be depressed with your finger like a button, and doing so triggers things on your phone, but the similarities stop there. Camera Control is a capacitive, pressure-sensitive surface that can be pressed, and that provides haptic feedback to communicate things about its status. For the sake of simplicity, it’s a button with a little bit extra. The extra being the ability to detect swipes and the force of your finger, along with a normal press.
It’s a clever setup, but it quickly starts to fall apart when you try and use it for an extended period of time.
A single press of Camera Control instantly dumps you into the iOS Camera app and an additional press after that takes a picture. A long press launches into Visual Intelligence, where you can feed visual inputs into AI models from OpenAI and Google. Of course, you can do a lot more than that, too. Inside the Camera, swiping on Camera Control adjusts a chosen setting, like the aperture or zoom. A firmer press lets you swap between settings, and a press after that lets you dive into whatever setting is currently selected.
It’s a clever setup, but it quickly starts to fall apart when you try and use it for an extended period of time. Initially, I just felt clumsier relying on Camera Control over the onscreen touch controls. Even once I got a handle of Camera Control, I can’t say it’s that dramatically faster to use. Maybe for someone who relies on the iPhone’s camera professionally, that difference is worth it, but I can’t imagine that’s the case for most people. Which means, for most people, Camera Control is a camera shortcut and a shutter button. Not bad things by any means, but not exactly revolutionary… yet.
Embracing more buttons on the iPhone
There’s at least one notable other example of a smartphone with a swipeable button
Considering how much Camera Control can actually measure and detect, its best use might lie outside the realm of pure photography. If Apple is embracing more buttons and more complexity on the iPhone, why not go even further and make Camera Control an entirely new kind of input method? The best example of how that might work is something like Asus’ Zenfone 9 and Zenfone 10. Both smartphones feature a touch-sensitive button the company calls a “Smart Key” that can not only unlock and lock the phones, but also interact with apps.
You can swipe on the Smart Key to pull down the notification shade with one hand, for example. Or scroll a web page without having to get your screen dirty. Or control media without having to pull up virtual buttons. And that’s on top of even more custom features. It’s not unlike the Action Button, which Apple has created default uses for, but can also be assigned any functionality you can design a shortcut for. Camera Control, or whatever this new version is called, could be similarly customized.
You can assign a new app to Camera Control in the Settings app.
As it stands, Apple does allow Camera Control to open a third-party camera app, the Magnifier accessibility feature, or the iPhone’s built-in QR code scanner. Developers can also offer deeper support for Camera Control in their apps to match Apple’s Camera app. Anything beyond that is presumably limited by the APIs Apple created for the button.
Apple’s love affair with customization is just beginning
Buttons, home screens, and the lockscreen
Apple is far more open to customization than it’s been at any point since the release of the original iPhone. Extending that to Camera Control doesn’t seem completely farfetched. If the button sticks around, the company is bound to do something more with it eventually.
- Brand
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Apple
- SoC
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A18 (3nm)
- Display
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6.1-inch 2556 x 1179 pixel resolution Super Retina XDR, 2000 nits, 60Hz
- RAM
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8GB
The iPhone 16 has an Action Button, Camera Control, and a new faster A18 chip that makes it a capable entry-level phone.
If you’re interested in exerting more control over your iPhone 16 with the features available to you now, Apple offers several great ways to customize your lockscreen and home screen, with more features on the way in iOS 26, macOS 26, and iPadOS 26. And if buttons are more your thing, Pocket-lint has a great list of apps you can assign to the Action Button for added convenience.
