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Comment by foxglacier | Hacker News Reader

God I gave up trying to use the camera from the lock screen because if you fail, it's slower than just unlocking it and using it from the main screen, which is itself pretty unreliably and slow. I wish there was a way to quickly and reliably take photos without constantly fighting the stupidly fragile UI. Back in the day, you could just press the shutter button on your camera and it would take a photo instantly, but somehow we've regressed and nobody cares. It eliminates a whole range of spontaneous photos.

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Apple cares. The iPhone 16 introduces a hardware camera button. You can use to launch to Camera while the phone is locked. You can use it as a shutter button. And other stuff.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-the-camera-contro...

Except that it doesn't actually take a photo - it (slowly) launches the camera app, which you can then use to take a photo. You can long press to begin filming a video, but at least by default it won't actually take a photo to press the shutter. Poster above is correct, it's slow enough that I frequently miss spontaneous pictures on my iPhone 16 Pro - as much because of the terrible recessed design of the shutter button as the software delay.

As I read your reply, I couldn’t help but think of the number of spontaneous photos I’ve been able to capture over the last decade because a camera is now built into my phone and available wherever I am. I still carry my camera a lot of the time, and for those who keep missing photos that depend on an instant shutter perhaps that would be a good move— but it’s hard to see how the effort to integrate a camera into phones is acting as a limit instead of expanding one

Oh it's certainly great having a camera in your phone. But it feels artificially crippled by all this fiddly software and tapping and swiping and reacting to the many screens you have to navigate through to get there. Great to hear newer phones have a hardware camera button, even if it does just open the app, that's still a big step forward.

A second click does. It's immensely useful because it's a physical shutter button.

I use the action button on the other side to immediately start recording a video from the lock screen via a shortcut.

> The iPhone 16 introduces a hardware camera button

Sony Xperias have had a shutter button since the Symbian days.

Typed from an Xperia 5III.

It's a really good idea™. It also has light tap and long press functions.

On the iPhone 16, there's also a customizable action button on the other side that can be mapped to all sorts of things.

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