Between now and September you can expect fairly regular updates on the impending iPhone 17 launch. These are couples for the course at this time of year. We hear about specifications, designs, prices and color finish, each report gets a few things right, a few things wrong, but gradually builds the existing consensus to get closer and closer to the full picture.
But a story this weekend was a little different. An anonymous tipster came into contact with macumors with news that the iPhone 17 Pro is getting three previously unknown camera upgrades. First, an increase in maximum optical zoom from 5x to 8x. Fair enough: It’s a new claim, but it pretty much fits with the 7x we already expected. Secondly, Apple is delivering either a new Pro Camera app or a major upgrade to the final cliff camera. Again, new, but not unreasonable.
And the third rumor? There will apparently be one other Kamma Control button.
Wait, what? Another button? Now this is definitely madness.
If you ask me, iPhone already has too many buttons. I have lost the number of times I accidentally triggered the existing camera control on my iPhone 16 Plus because it is in a place where the middle or ring finger on my left hand would naturally land when I pick it up. (It’s such a common problem, Apple has a whole set of accessibility settings to mitigate it.) The edge of a phone is not just dead space; It has a feature that must hold the user’s hand and there is a limit to the number of hardware checks you can add to this space before it starts to become impractical.
The action button on the opposite edge gives me problems in a different way. It is next to the volume controls that I usually use when touching, but the presence of a third button complicates this interaction. Instead of feeling the two buttons and pressing the top or bottom depending on what I want to do, I have to continue to explore the edge to determine whether there is another button over or not. It is not exactly rocket science, but when you just want to reject the volume without seeing, it adds friction to what should be a simple and intuitive process. The mute ship was far easier to distinguish from the volume controls; The action button is too similar.
Button down
Apple’s approach to hardware used to be pretty different. It will only add hardware checks as a matter of last resort; More commonly, it would strip them ruthlessly away and cut away by the marble with foreign complication to reach work on minimalist art inside. I even wrote an article about the company’s fear of buttons and argued that it should prioritize ease of use rather than elegance. I still think so but unfortunately Apple’s new dependence on adding physical control (Apple Watch Ultra has an extra button that I accidentally triggered while testing it) and elegance.
Jim Martin / Foundry
Adding a button to an existing product should be a big thing. Product conductors should be forced to stand sweat in front of a hard selection to justify the change. Why is this necessary? What does it add? What does it cost? What do customers think? And how will it change their relationship with the product?
Your mileage may vary and I may be an atypical user, but I don’t feel like I’m getting something out of camera control or action button. I have (willingly) used camera control maybe two or three times since I finished writing my quasi review. And while I use the action button all the time, I almost always use it as a mute switch, an important job that the change is doing better. In both cases, the change has achieved almost nothing while disturbing the way I use the device and messy with my muscle memory.
So no, I don’t want another camera control, very much thanks. The good news is that realistic will not get one. The tipster is anonymous, so we cannot compare this prediction with a proven track record with accurate claims in the past. Makrumors acknowledge that it has not been able to confirm the information via other sources, saying “skepticism is obviously justified for now.” It is a hardware change and they usually leak much earlier than this through prototypes and supply chain sources. But above all, it just doesn’t make much sense to introduce a button that does the same as someone else.
Maybe I’m mistaken for this and Apple is planning to complicate the iPhone’s exterior design further. After all, this would fit with the track for the last few years, with Cupertino added the action button in 2023 and the camera control in 2024. Maybe an unnecessary extra barely adds an annual ritual: Selfie button in 2025, Airplane button button in 2026, buy a vision pro -button in 2027 (please do not press. But probably not.
And that’s a good thing, because after years of not including enough buttons, Apple has gone wild too far in the opposite direction.