When Apple announced the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max last year, I raised my eyebrows at the so-called Action button. While I like that the clever people of Cupertino packed more… er action into a somewhat redundant mute slider, I was less convinced of the button’s limitations; After all, you could already use the volume buttons on previous iPhones to activate the shutter of the camera app.
But as I used the iPhone 15 Pro Max more and heard more praise for the benefits of titanium and the generally near-perfect iPhone experience, I started to like the Action button more and more.
I have it set to activate the ‘torch’ option in iOS (aka the camera flash) and it’s surprisingly useful, especially on a Max phone. Before, I had to swipe up from the top of the phone to get the dropdown menu, then tap the torch icon; when my hands were wet (no, not like this, I live in rainy London), that wasn’t always easy.
So the action button became a real blessing in my life; that might be a sad reflection of my existence, but it doesn’t matter.
As a tech journalist—or any journalist, for that matter—I often find myself musing during quiet moments or during my commute. And today’s musings, mixed with machinations about the Action button, triggered an unexpected thought.
I miss the squeezable edges of previous Google Pixel phones.
First introduced with the Pixel 2 phones, Google provided its phones with sides that activated the Google Assistant via a short, sharp squeeze. I don’t know exactly how it worked; something was going on strain gauges – but it was an effective way to wake up Google’s smarter take on Siri without barking out the sometimes clunky “ok Google” activation phrase.
What may have felt like an unnecessary feature ended up being oddly useful and obvious. It also introduced a level of freshness and small innovation to the Pixel phones that I felt a lot of phones were lacking at the time.
Sadly, the Pixel phones’ squeezable sides only lasted a few generations, going the way of the dodo when the Google Pixel 5 arrived, with the search giant taking a different approach to phone design – less is more – before settling on the Pixel aesthetic and debuting an AI focus with the Pixel 6.
Longing for touch
Do I need squeezable sides to make a comeback in the smartphone arena? Not really.
But while the best phones lean towards AI integration and smart features that range between gimmicky and decent smarts, this is all done on the software side, except with AI-focused chipsets. However, I think there is still some room to be innovative and creative with phone hardware, beyond just making the screen flexible, as we see with the best foldable phones.
I expect the rumored iPhone 16 line to be very much an evolution of the current Apple phones. But I would love it if Apple took inspiration from some of the quirky phones of the past and introduced some new physical features or at least made the Action button even more functional.
With all this AI technology, I’d like to see phones make better use of haptics, accelerometers, and other touchpoints so I can do more with my smartphone without necessarily having to look at and tap a specific app or function.
Looking at previous phones, I think Google is the type of company that introduces new hardware quirks and then Apple is the one that refines them to a good point.
The first teaser for the Google Pixel 9 Pro doesn’t suggest a major design change is coming, but I’m hoping the search giant has packed something special under the hardware that will get me excited and happy, and that it brings some creativity to the best Android phones. Hopefully we’ll see that soon enough.