The iPhone’s Action button is coming to Nothing phones, and I’m a big fan

The latest news on the Nothing Phone 3a, Nothing’s next big launch, is that it will include a new button called the Essential Key. This will mostly be used to trigger various AI-related commands, but it should also help with other tasks such as screen recording. There’s no word on whether you’ll be able to customize what the button does, but that doesn’t seem far-fetched, given that customization is already one of the brand’s signature traits. I’m also a big fan of Nothing’s glyph lighting.

If the Essential Key sounds familiar, it’s probably because it looks a lot like the Action button on iPhones, first introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro. There’s an obvious bit of copycatting going on, but I’m all in favor — in fact, I think every smartphone should have an equivalent, and maybe additional buttons on top of that.

Swiss Army phones

The value of customizable buttons

The iPhone’s Action button just triggers a Ring/Silent toggle by default, and that’s how I use it on my iPhone 16 Pro. That’s probably not what you’re expecting from a journalist writing this sort of op-ed — but it makes too much sense in my case, since it helps mute obnoxious ads, not to mention avoid disturbances when I get up at 5:20 in the morning (seriously Apple, ban those ads from the App Store).

Everyone has a different lifestyle, though, and that’s the beauty of how many options Apple provides. If you’ve got poor eyesight, you can use the button to trigger a magnifying glass. If you’re an expat living somewhere like Germany or China, you might need the Translate app on a daily basis. When you really want to go hog wild, you can assign the button to a Shortcuts automation — in theory, you could press a single button to navigate home, put on a commuting soundtrack, and prime your HomeKit devices, so everything is ready when you walk in the door.

Put in that light, it’s actually a little strange that we’ve taken button layouts for granted, as if no one did anything more on their phones than turn them on, make calls, play media, and talk to a voice assistant. Smartphones have become primary computing devices for many people, used for everything from driving around town to logging workouts, so it’s only fitting that they should offer something closer to the customization of a computer. You’d be supremely annoyed if keyboard shortcuts disappeared from your Mac or Windows PC.

As I said in the intro, we could potentially use even more buttons, and by that I don’t mean the awkward back/frame-tapping gestures we’ve seen on some devices. Media playback controls spring to mind, yet it’d probably be better to add more customizable buttons, preferably with expanded software flexibility. Imagine, for instance, being able to flip between multiple homescreens — one for home, and others for work, the gym, or riding around town. That would simplify my own life, at least.

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Pocket-lint / Nothing

Perhaps, but it’s important to remember that many phone makers have experimented with extra buttons without setting an industry standard. Samsung devices used to have a dedicated Bixby button you couldn’t customize at all. There have also been phones with dedicated gaming controls, and then there’s the ever-popular camera shutter — something Apple has taken to with the iPhone 16’s Camera Control.

There’s something to be said for simplicity. Phones are meant to be intuitive, and that can break when you start introducing too many controls. For casual users, new buttons can remain a mystery forever, and even aficionados may find themselves triggering commands by accident. Goodness knows I’ve taken too many screenshots on the phones I’ve owned over the years, iPhone or Android, simply because I held them with an awkward grip for a few seconds. How often do most people need screenshots, anyway?

In this situation, though, I think the trend is going to stick. When Apple adopts a new feature, it usually attracts followers by gravity, since no one wants to be seen as unfashionable or too far behind the industry leader — even though Apple isn’t the leader in a lot of markets anymore. The company was also smart about how it implemented the Action button, simply replacing the mute switch and giving users more software options. The flexibility is there if you want it, but like me, you can ignore it if it suits you. Who knows — I might want it to launch cycling directions someday, assuming I ever end up moving to the Pacific Northwest as I’d like to.

We’ll only really see how things unfold towards the end of this year, as more phone refreshes hit the market. Apple’s only on its second generation of Action Button iPhones, and most rivals probably weren’t in a rush to copy the iPhone 15 Pro — especially since they didn’t know how things would shake out. With the button on every new iPhone model, though, phone designers are going to have to make some sort of judgment on whether copycatting makes sense.

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