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It’s been several months since I decided to embrace the “dumb phone” trend – well, as much as I can with a dumb phone. iPhone 16. There’s a lot to like about me The second latest iPhonebut this one feature constantly bothered me and made it difficult to use my phone. That’s why I decided to turn off one of the cool features that was meant to help me use AI, and it made a big difference for me to enjoy using my phone again.
I was excited to upgrade to the 16, but since I was coming from an older iPhone model, I was surprised to see two new buttons: the action and camera control buttons. The action button is a small button located above the volume adjusters. It was introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro models and it is Customizable button It can do anything from turning on your ringer to Order your Dunkin’ coffee To go. She is young and demure and minds her own business. It’s the camera control button that caused all this chaos.
Camera control It’s a new button in the iPhone 16 lineup that does what the name suggests: it controls the camera. It should help you take photos quickly and act as a shortcut to launch the camera app. You can swipe your finger across the mini settings menu to adjust the camera zoom, among other things. But there’s one real reason the button exists: artificial intelligence. All iPhone 17 models have this button as well.
Like any other tech company, Apple is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Apple intelligence He’s been the driving force behind a lot of the company’s innovations, with many of the AI updates in the new iOS 26 operating system. But there’s no bigger sign of Apple’s dive into AI than the camera control button. It is the physical path to… Visual intelligencea new AI-powered feature that lets you use your camera to scan real-world objects to get more information about them. It may sound cheerful, but it makes no sense at all to me, and it’s a feature I’ve never dared to use.
there Other use cases For camera control button, including methods Customize your button settingsas my colleagues discovered through their tests. But this does not change the fact that the camera control button is fully functional annoying.
It’s a long button, roughly the size of the power button, located on the bottom right side of the device. It is very easy to click on it by accident. I’ve had the camera open while my phone was in my pocket, while I was driving and using navigation apps, and once when I had my phone turned off overnight, which left the camera app open all night and drained my phone’s battery.
And if that wasn’t annoying enough, every time I intended to open the camera via the camera control, it required multiple taps to do so. Go figure.
With camera control enabled, my camera roll included amazing shots like these:
I couldn’t tell you when or where these photos were accidentally taken.
I ask you: What good is a button that works when you don’t need it and doesn’t work when you do? There are actually three ways to access your iPhone camera from the lock screen that take seconds to use. Camera control is an expensive and very unreliable addition to newer iPhones, all for the sake of AI features that Many people don’t need or use it. Not a single moment has passed since I turned off camera control that I missed it.
I realize my gripes with camera control are minor complaints among what has been an overall positive experience with my new phone. But as an AI reporter, I can’t help but see this as a worrying sign. Many tech companies have overhauled their software and hardware to be AI-friendly, whether it’s spamming Google with Gemini pop-ups in every Google app, the new Copilot button on Microsoft Windows laptops or Apple’s camera control button.
Tech companies are too eager to jump on the AI train and haven’t given enough thought to whether these features enhance our experience using their products or just hinder it. And there aren’t enough unsubscribe options. Fortunately for me and my camera roll, Apple does. But I hope such drastic measures won’t be necessary in the future, as companies become more intentional with their AI-enabled features.
If you want to join me in making the camera control button obsolete, you can go to your iPhone’s settings and select camera. Then press Camera control. Under Camera control, select accessibilityand then Toggle camera control. If you’re also squeamish, you can adjust the number of clicks (and pressure required) to trigger the button on the same Accessibility page under Light compressive strength.
For more, check out our hands-on experience with iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.