Camera Control on the iPhone 16 Line ⇥ apple.com
Camera Control — a result of thoughtful hardware and software integration — elevates the camera experience on the iPhone 16 lineup. It is packed with innovation, including a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows for touch interactions. […]
Later this year, Camera Control will unlock visual intelligence to help users learn about objects and places faster than ever before. […]
Nilay Patel and Alison Johnson, the Verge:
I ran into Apple’s Phil Schiller, and we chatted briefly about the Camera Control button. I wanted to know about the balance of using the button as a classic camera control versus the beginning of the camera itself becoming an input method for Apple Intelligence, and he told me that it was really both, which is fascinating.
The positioning of this question is what is fascinating to me — far more so than Schiller’s confirmation. Apple could have added a hardware camera button at any time in the iPhone’s history. It did not until it wanted to use the camera for things not directly concerning photography and videography. Oh, it has those features too, of course, but it also makes the buttons down the right-hand side of this year’s iPhone line into dedicated Apple Intelligence launchers.
The third-party case story is going to be interesting. Apple’s own cases have a button with “sapphire crystal, coupled to a conductive layer” to create a passthrough experience. Launch-day third-party options, like those from Otterbox, appear to simply have a cutout for that button. Will Apple sell accessory makers the dedicated button part, I wonder? I doubt it, but you never know.