iPhone 15 Pro may ditch two buttons for volume control

Comments

• Reply 1 of 10

  Japhey Posts: 1,767member

  March 3, 2023 5:00PM

  JP234 said:

  Am I the only one who is not a fan of these "solid state" haptic buttons replacing mechanical ones?

  No fan of my latest car's gear shifter, either. There's no mechanical connection to the transmission. You have to push the shifter forward to reverse, and pull it back to go forward, and then you have to press a button marked "P" on the console to park. And none of the autos I'm interested in offer manual transmissions.

  Something else you don’t like? 

  Shocking. 

  
• Reply 2 of 10

  mulasien Posts: 22member

  March 3, 2023 5:52PM

  But...why though? What problem is this solving that's not going to introduce bigger problems?

  
• Reply 3 of 10

  grandact73 Posts: 28member

  March 3, 2023 8:40PM

  Japhey said:

  JP234 said:

  Am I the only one who is not a fan of these "solid state" haptic buttons replacing mechanical ones?

  No fan of my latest car's gear shifter, either. There's no mechanical connection to the transmission. You have to push the shifter forward to reverse, and pull it back to go forward, and then you have to press a button marked "P" on the console to park. And none of the autos I'm interested in offer manual transmissions.

  Something else you don’t like? 

  Shocking. 

  So you support this change?
• Reply 4 of 10

  StrangeDays Posts: 12,871member

  March 3, 2023 9:35PM

  JP234 said:

  Am I the only one who is not a fan of these "solid state" haptic buttons replacing mechanical ones?

  No fan of my latest car's gear shifter, either. There's no mechanical connection to the transmission. You have to push the shifter forward to reverse, and pull it back to go forward, and then you have to press a button marked "P" on the console to park. And none of the autos I'm interested in offer manual transmissions.

  I don't see them saying it's haptic, but I have zero issue w/ the haptic "click" on modern Apple trackpads. Nor the digital crown on AW. They feel entirely as I'd expect them to and on the trackpad it's hard to believe it isn't a levered button.
  

  
• Reply 5 of 10

  StrangeDays Posts: 12,871member

  March 3, 2023 9:36PM

  mulasien said:

  But...why though? What problem is this solving that's not going to introduce bigger problems?

  FTA you just read: "But it would also potentially give the iPhone 15 Pro greater water and dust resistance"
  
  What problems does your engineering background indicate this will introduce?

  
• Reply 6 of 10

  mulasien Posts: 22member

  March 3, 2023 9:47PM

  StrangeDays said:

  mulasien said:

  But...why though? What problem is this solving that's not going to introduce bigger problems?

  FTA you just read: "But it would also potentially give the iPhone 15 Pro greater water and dust resistance"
  
  What problems does your engineering background indicate this will introduce?

  First issue has nothing to do with engineering, but rather a user adjustment from the last 10+ years of interacting with an iphone. The ability to mute your phone by feel and know if it's muted without having to look at a screen to confirm via a toggle switch. One thing I missed when I was on Android phones was that physical toggle. Having to go into settings to mute my Android phone was a PAIN vs simply toggling a physical switch. Losing a toggle switch after establishing it as a differentiating feature of iPhones feels like a step backwards, in my opinion. That is a user-interface trade off to be made in favor of better water resistance, though I'd wager that the current water resistance is just fine now without having to make such a major trade off.
  
  From an engineering standpoint, if the buttons are haptic only, how do you hard reset the phone in the case of a lock up? If the buttons are software-driven, and the software is inoperable, what's the manual bypass?
  
  The only thing more non-user-friendly would be to remove the charging port...or are you part of THAT crowd?

  edited March 2023
• Reply 7 of 10

  StrangeDays Posts: 12,871member

  March 4, 2023 6:00PM

  mulasien said:

  StrangeDays said:

  mulasien said:

  But...why though? What problem is this solving that's not going to introduce bigger problems?

  FTA you just read: "But it would also potentially give the iPhone 15 Pro greater water and dust resistance"
  
  What problems does your engineering background indicate this will introduce?

  First issue has nothing to do with engineering, but rather a user adjustment from the last 10+ years of interacting with an iphone. The ability to mute your phone by feel and know if it's muted without having to look at a screen to confirm via a toggle switch. One thing I missed when I was on Android phones was that physical toggle. Having to go into settings to mute my Android phone was a PAIN vs simply toggling a physical switch. Losing a toggle switch after establishing it as a differentiating feature of iPhones feels like a step backwards, in my opinion. That is a user-interface trade off to be made in favor of better water resistance, though I'd wager that the current water resistance is just fine now without having to make such a major trade off.
  
  From an engineering standpoint, if the buttons are haptic only, how do you hard reset the phone in the case of a lock up? If the buttons are software-driven, and the software is inoperable, what's the manual bypass?
  
  The only thing more non-user-friendly would be to remove the charging port...or are you part of THAT crowd?

  You're confused, this article is about the volume buttons -- switching back from two different buttons to one button like it was on the earlier iPhones (aka a rocker button). You can absolutely still operate them by touch -- these are still physical, they just work differently. 
  
• Reply 8 of 10

  mulasien Posts: 22member

  March 4, 2023 7:34PM

  StrangeDays said:

  mulasien said:

  StrangeDays said:

  mulasien said:

  But...why though? What problem is this solving that's not going to introduce bigger problems?

  FTA you just read: "But it would also potentially give the iPhone 15 Pro greater water and dust resistance"
  
  What problems does your engineering background indicate this will introduce?

  First issue has nothing to do with engineering, but rather a user adjustment from the last 10+ years of interacting with an iphone. The ability to mute your phone by feel and know if it's muted without having to look at a screen to confirm via a toggle switch. One thing I missed when I was on Android phones was that physical toggle. Having to go into settings to mute my Android phone was a PAIN vs simply toggling a physical switch. Losing a toggle switch after establishing it as a differentiating feature of iPhones feels like a step backwards, in my opinion. That is a user-interface trade off to be made in favor of better water resistance, though I'd wager that the current water resistance is just fine now without having to make such a major trade off.
  
  From an engineering standpoint, if the buttons are haptic only, how do you hard reset the phone in the case of a lock up? If the buttons are software-driven, and the software is inoperable, what's the manual bypass?
  
  The only thing more non-user-friendly would be to remove the charging port...or are you part of THAT crowd?

  You're confused, this article is about the volume buttons -- switching back from two different buttons to one button like it was on the earlier iPhones (aka a rocker button). You can absolutely still operate them by touch -- these are still physical, they just work differently. 
  

  You know what, you may be right. Similar articles on other Apple sites are grouping in removing the mute switch along with capacitive volume buttons, so I may have assumed the same was true for this article. I think my argument still stands on the mute switch even though it's not part of this article  .

  edited March 2023
• Reply 9 of 10

  FileMakerFeller Posts: 1,546member

  March 6, 2023 4:55AM

  This may be a design philosophy that expects more than one device to be part of the user experience. Maybe if you have some sort of AR device that handles all of your notifications (visual, audible, haptic) the phone will trigger a message to that device to provide feedback to the user. For example, if I'm wearing my apple watch that could buzz to let me know that the volume on the phone has changed.
  
  Not saying that's going to happen, but I think it's technically feasible now. A lot of research will be required to determine if that's a potentially useful change.