A random report from an account with zero track-record for anything claims that the iPhone 18 will drop the Camera Control button as too few people are using it.
The claim is entirely meaningless, but I strongly suspect that it’s right in one respect: that hardly anyone is using the feature …
The Camera Control button was introduced in the two iPhone 16 Pro models a little under a year ago, and Apple made a pretty big deal of it at the time.
A hardware control was something I’d wished for prior to its introduction, and I had high hopes for it once the rumors solidified.
In practice, I found it fiddlier to use than I’d hoped, and found it especially disappointing for my primary user case of allowing smooth zoom during video shooting. While I was optimistic at the time that Apple would improve it through software updates, that never happened. The company seemed to launch it with much fanfare and then completely forget that it existed.
These days, about the only way I use it is to double tap it as a way of instantly going from locked phone to camera app and then taking a photo. I virtually never use the slider functionality.
Anecdotally, I don’t think I know anyone else who uses it, despite owning an iPhone 16 Pro. My suspicion is that this feature probably ranks as one of Apple’s biggest flops – but let’s see!
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