Don't Buy an iPhone 16 Case Yet. Here's What to Look for First

After swapping the alert slider for an Action button last year, Apple is switching up its buttons again with the new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16. This capacitive button is quite a diverse toolbox: It can open the camera app, and act as a shutter, preview, zoom, control switch and more. It’s arrived on all four new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models, and the Action button that debuted on the iPhone 15 Pro has now migrated to the normal model this year, which means that no model can reuse phone cases this year the way the iPhone 15 and 14 could.

A new phone needs a new case. Nothing invites Murphy’s Law faster than trying to hold a brand-new, buck-naked $1,000-plus phone over a concrete floor. There are a myriad of just-launched cases out there for the new models — enough to make this Android user dizzy with its variety — but you need to tap the brakes before you add a case to your iPhone 16 preorder on Friday. While the vast, vast majority of third-party cases have cutouts for this new capacitive button, the compatibility of Apple’s own cases is less than crystal clear.

Watch this: iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus: First Look

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The picture below shows the Beats iPhone 16 Case with MagSafe, the Apple-owned brand’s first iPhone case, and while Beats says it does support Camera Control, you wouldn’t know from looking at its renders, allowing it to serve as an example of what you’ll need to watch for. The Camera Control capacitive button sits on the lower left side of the phone’s frame when looking at a phone case from the back. The vast majority of cases will have a noticeable cutout around the button, so if the sides are flush like these, without any hint of a button overlay or indent, that’s your first sign of potential trouble.

Capacitive buttons are nothing new to mobile phones, and they can technically still be used through a case, provided special materials or methods are used. In Beats and Apple’s case, their cases “feature a sapphire crystal, coupled to a conductive layer to communicate finger movements to the Camera Control” while providing a cleaner, more polished look than cases with a gaping hole in the bumper. However, that needs extra R&D time, as well as extra material and manufacturing costs, and even when it’s designed right, it can often feel disjointed to use through all those extra layers.

This is why we recommend patience before ordering your iPhone 16’s case. It’s not that Apple or Beats cases — or other cases with capacitive layers like Spigen’s Ultra Hybrid T and Supcase’s UB Mag and UB Grip series — don’t work; we just can’t tell how well they’ll work yet. We need to put them through our rigorous testing before we can recommend them to you.

Most cases sidestep this issue by using cutouts instead, but not all cutouts are created equal. If the cutout is too wide, it leaves the frame and the Camera Control button vulnerable to damage, but too narrow a cutout won’t allow for you to slide your finger up and down for zoom or aperture controls. Manufacturers have had years of experience testing that sweet spot though, thanks to the capacitive fingerprint scanners in hundreds of Android phones over the last decade, including most of today’s best folding phones.

We’ll be testing as many iPhone 16 cases as we can get our hands on over the coming weeks and months, both MagSafe and old-school, capacitive or cutout, just as we’ll put the phones themselves through our rigorous review testing so that we can see just how upgraded these new cameras are and how easy Camera Control actually makes them to use. And let’s not forget that there was much more announced at Apple’s Glowtime event, from its newest Apple Watches to its not-really-new AirPods Max colors and USB-C charging.