A newly-revealed patent details a button that can be swiped as well as pressed. It’s the iPhone’s Camera Control button, and it may be coming to the iPad.
Detail from the patent showing an iPad with Camera Control – image credit: Apple
Introduced in 2024 with the iPhone 16 range, the Camera Control button has been sufficiently divisive that Apple is even rumored to be dropping it entirely. That’s unlikely, if not impossible, and now a newly-granted patent suggests that Apple at least used to have big plans for the button.
That’s big as in the device it would go on. The innocuously-named “Input System for Portable Electronic Device” patent chiefly consists of drawings of iPads.