Innovations in the mobile phone industry in recent years have followed a clear path: Android borrows ideas from iOS, iOS integrates Android’s features, and the cycle repeats itself. In a market where competition pushes manufacturers to constantly improve, this is an almost inevitable process.

But rather than being a problem, this dynamic has a positive impact on users: Both platforms offer the best of both worlds, with improvements that benefit everyone, no matter which side of the ecosystem you are on. In the end, the real winners are users with increasingly complete devices.

The problem arises when the manufacturer is “inspired” by features that are not well received. Camera Control of the iPhone 16 is one of them: According to what we criticized in the review and read on the forums, it is a feature that does not please the users.

OPPO opened the season. This is the first Android phone to feature a camera-dedicated capacitive button – a far cry from the simple camera button Sony has integrated into the Xperia family – and we’re more than confident it won’t be the last. In fact, Realme is already testing this.

Problem? The same button we discussed in the iPhone analysis: this button Wants to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Although we will first comment on the positive. It is an excellent alternative as a button to quickly call up the camera. Unlocking the phone and turning on the camera is quick, but double-pressing the button is even quicker. So far, so good.

What matters is that manufacturers have failed to make the camera button a button where the functions it is intended to perform are more convenient than the functions we currently perform with the screen.

Simply put, Taking photos is very uncomfortable. Whether our mobile device is landscape or portrait, it is usually enough to put your thumb close to press the screen and take a photo. This is urgent. The location of these buttons that don’t fall on the index finger (something they need to achieve if they want to simulate a professional camera button) requires you to move your hand all the way for your finger to reach it. Adding to the discomfort is the extra time it takes to adjust our hand.

The same thing happens with zoom. Gesture click to zoom It allows us to be noticeably more precise than such capacitive buttons, as well as being much faster when deep zooming. It is enough to exaggerate the movement with our fingers, and with the keys we need to scroll little by little to reach the zoom point we want.

The question is open and may be up to Apple: Will this button be permanent or an experiment? The reception of the iPhone 16 Camera Control was not great, but the market started to make moves by imitating it. If Apple kills it, the industry will act accordingly. There are only two ways; Try to improve this as much as possible or just accept that tapping the screen to take a photo isn’t that bad.

Image | Xataka

in Xataka | Unexpected return of physical button: Industry opted for ‘all screen’ but experts and users want it to return