Don’t buy an iPhone 16 case yet. This is what you should pay attention to first

After swapping out the alert slider for an action button last year, Apple is changing its buttons again with the new camera control button on the iPhone 16. This capacitive button is quite a versatile toolbox: it can open the camera app and act as a shutter button, preview, zoom, control switch, and more. It has arrived on all four new models of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, and the action button that debuted on the iPhone 15 Pro has now migrated to the regular model this year, meaning no model this year can reuse phone cases like the iPhone 15 and 14 did.

A new phone needs a new case. Nothing invites Murphy’s Law faster than trying to hold a brand new, stark-naked, $1,000+ phone over a concrete floor. There are a myriad of just-released cases for the new models—enough to make this Android user dizzy at the variety—but you need to hit the brakes before adding a case to your iPhone 16 pre-order on Friday. While the vast majority of third-party cases have cutouts for this new capacitive button, the compatibility of Apple’s own cases is far from clear.

Check this out: iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus: First look

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The image below shows the Beats iPhone 16 case with MagSafe, the Apple brand’s first iPhone case. Although Beats says it supports Camera Control, you can’t tell by looking at the renders. It serves as an example of what to look out for. The capacitive button for camera control is located on the bottom left side of the phone’s frame when looking at a phone case from the back. The vast majority of cases have a noticeable cutout around the button, so if the sides are flush like they are here, with no indication of a button pad or recess, that’s your first sign of potential problems.

Capacitive buttons are nothing new to mobile phones, and can technically be used through a case as long as special materials or methods are used. In the case of Beats and Apple, their cases feature “a sapphire crystal bonded to a conductive layer to communicate finger movements to the camera controls” while offering a cleaner, sleeker look than cases with a gaping hole in the bumper. However, this requires additional research and development time, as well as additional material and manufacturing costs, and even when designed correctly, it can often feel disjointed when in use through all those extra layers.

For this reason, we recommend that you be patient before ordering the case for your iPhone 16. It is not that Apple or Beats cases – or other cases with capacitive layers like Spigen’s Ultra Hybrid T and Supcases UB Mag and UB Grip series — do not work; we just cannot say how So they still work. We have to put them through our rigorous testing before we can recommend them to you.

In most cases, this problem is circumvented by using cutouts, but not all cutouts are created equal. If the cutout is too wide, the bezel and camera control button are vulnerable to damage, but a cutout that’s too narrow won’t allow you to slide your finger up and down to control zoom or aperture. Manufacturers have years of experience testing this sweet spot, though, thanks to the capacitive fingerprint scanners in hundreds of Android phones over the past decade, including most of today’s best flip phones.

We’ll be testing as many iPhone 16 cases as we can get our hands on in the coming weeks and months, both MagSafe and classic, capacitive or cutout, and we’ll also be putting the phones themselves through our rigorous testing tests so we can see how good these new cameras are and how easy they actually are to use thanks to Camera Control. And let’s not forget that there was a lot more announced at Apple’s Glowtime event, from the latest Apple Watches to the not-so-new AirPods Max colors and USB-C charging.