It’s been a few months since I decided to embrace the “dumb phone” trend — well, as much as I can with a iPhone 16. Many like to second latest iPhonebut this one feature keeps bugging me and making it difficult to use my phone. So I decided to pull the plug on one of those fancy features that were meant to help me use AI, and it made all the difference for me to enjoy using my phone again.

I was excited to upgrade to 16, but since I came 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 above the volume adjusters. It is introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro models and is a customizable button which can do anything from turning your ringer on order your Dunkin’ coffee to go. It’s small, demure and minds its own business. It’s the camera control button that causes all the chaos.

Camera control a new button in the iPhone 16 line that does what the name suggests: It controls your camera. It’s meant to help you quickly take photos and serves as a shortcut to launch your camera app. You can slide your finger into a mini settings menu to adjust your camera’s zoom, among other things. But there is one real reason for the button’s existence: AI. All iPhone 17 models have this button, too.

Like other tech companies, Apple has invested heavily in artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence is the driving force behind much of the company’s innovation, with several AI updates in the new iOS 26. But there’s no bigger sign of Apple’s dive into AI than the camera control button. This is the physical path to Visual Intelligencea new AI-powered feature that lets you use your camera to scan objects in the real world to get more information about them. It sounds snazzy, but it’s completely useless to me, and it’s a feature I’ve never been drawn to using.

there other use cases for camera control buttons, including ways to customize your button settingsas my colleagues found through their testing. But that doesn’t change the fact that my camera control button is perfect annoying.

This is a long button, about the size of the power button, located on the lower right side of the device. And it’s very, very easy to tap without accident. I opened my camera while putting my phone in my pocket, while I was driving and using navigation apps and one time while I turned my phone off at night, leaving the camera app open overnight and draining my phone’s battery.

And if that wasn’t annoying enough, every time I wanted to open my camera via the camera control, it took multiple taps to do so. Alright figure.

As I turned on the camera control, my camera roll included amazing shots like this:

Let me ask you: What’s the point of a button that works when you don’t need it and doesn’t work when you do? There are now three ways to access your iPhone’s camera from the lock screen that take literally seconds to use. Camera control is a very expensive, not very reliable addition to the newer iPhones, all for the AI ​​features that many people do not need or use. There hasn’t been a single time since I’ve turned off camera control that I’ve missed it.

I realize that my gripes with the camera controls are minor gripes in the midst of what has been an overall positive experience with my new phone. But as an AI reporter, I can’t help but see this as an ominous sign. Many tech companies are overhauling their software and devices to be AI-friendly, whether it’s Google that spams us with Gemini pop-ups in every single Google app, the new Copilot button on Microsoft Windows laptops or Apple’s camera control button.

Tech companies are too eager to get on the AI ​​train and don’t think enough about whether these features will improve or just detract from our experience using their products. And not enough options to opt-out of the offer. Thankfully for me and my camera roll, Apple did. But I hope that in the future, such drastic measures won’t be necessary as companies become more deliberate with their AI-enabled features.

If you want to join me in making your camera control button obsolete, you can navigate to your iPhone’s settings and select camera. Then, tap camera control. Within the camera control, select accessibilityand then turn off camera control. If you also experience hyper-sensitivity, you can adjust how many taps (and the pressure required) to trigger the button on the same accessibility page below. strong light pressure.

For more, check out our hands-on experience at iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.