When it comes to hardware controls, Apple's "crowning" achievement is its digital crown. So why not bring it to the iPhone?
Apple's digital crown is criminally underused, languishing on niche products and on the regular Apple Watch. So how about bringing it to Apple's most important product, the iPhone, and exploiting it for all it's worth? Some observers say the digital crown would be perfect on a future iPhone Ultra.
"As a professional photographer, the concept of a watch-style digital crown on the iPhone is intriguing. The digital crown could significantly enhance user control, offering precise adjustments for volume, camera zoom, and scrolling. This tactile feature would be particularly beneficial during photography sessions, allowing for more nuanced adjustments without relying solely on touch gestures," professional travel photographer Kevin Mercier told Tech Times via email.
Crowning Glory
The digital crown is an amazingly useful control, combining an intuitive interface, an almost-wear-free mechanism, and the kind of fine control not possible with a touch screen. It debuted on the Apple Watch and then expanded to the AirPods Max and the Vision Pro.
If you're wearing an Apple Watch, twiddle the crown now, but do it without raising your wrist and waking the watch. It spins freely, with no click stops or other haptic feedback. But as soon as you raise your wrist, the haptic engine kicks in and makes the spinning crown click as if it were a mechanical part with cogs and teeth attached.
That's neat, but it goes even further. Depending on what you're controlling, the resolution of those clicks changes. If you're setting a timer, then it clicks for every minute or second that scrolls by. But with a sparser list, the clicks are less frequent. This makes it easy to fine-tune the feedback to the task, and you use it without even realizing it.
On the watch, it's mostly used for scrolling lists or changing the volume of the media player. On the AirPods Max, it's mostly used as a quick volume control, and on the Vision Pro, the digital crown can act as a home button, adjust volume, dial in the ratio between the passthrough cameras and the virtual world, and a few more tasks.
On all of these devices, the little finger dial makes sense. Most non-digital watches all have crowns anyway, headphones go well with volume knobs, and the Vision Pro is such an awkward package that no control would really get in the way.
But on the iPhone, won't it be a real pain? Apple is slowly adding more and more buttons to the iPhone, but all of those are sleek, flush-mounted controls. A digital crown would snag on your pocket, and end up getting snapped off.
Unless it was protected, like the digital crown in the Apple Watch Ultra. We already have huge camera bumps, so why not a crown bump? It might be a little odd to start with, but the benefits would be huge.
Analog Feedback
With the digital crown safely nestled in its protective side-turret, the fun begins. First off, you could use it as a volume control or any other on-screen element. For example, you could tap the timeline in a video clip and use the crown to scrub back and forth. And you could use it as it is used on the Apple Watch to set timers and scroll other kinds of lists.
Or how about music apps? In apps like GarageBand or Logic Pro, you could not only scrub the timeline, but you could tap an on-screen control, and then use the crown to adjust it. This is where the haptic feedback would shine, allowing for a fine-grained control not possible with touch alone.
And then we get to the best part-the camera. You could use this little haptic dial to select shutter speeds and ISO, change settings, choose filters, and control manual focus and zoom. And because it's all done by touch, you wouldn't need to take your eyes off your subject just to find and tap an on-screen control. Let's also remember that the digital crown also works as a button, and it would make a great shutter release for the camera.
"There are great camera apps for the iPhone, many of which allow full manual control. But no matter how good the UI may be, it will of course, never match the speed and convenience of physical dials," writes iPhone photographer and 9to5Mac reporter Ben Lovejoy.
Accessibility-wise, there are even more options. You could use it to scroll the screen if your fine motor control isn't up to swiping a screen, and it could also be used to zoom the display, navigate lists, and more.
Maybe we won't see a digital crown on the entry-level iPhone anytime soon, but that's only going to make an iPhone Ultra even more attractive if it ever materializes.
About the author: Charlie Sorrel has been writing about technology, and its effects on society and the planet, for almost two decades. Previously, you could find him at Wired's Gadget Lab, Fast Company's CoExist, Cult of Mac, and Mac Stories. He also writes for his own site, StraightNoFilter.com, Lifewire Tech News, and iFixit.
