Two months after some case makers were wrong-footed by Apple’s decision to replace the mute switch with an Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro lineup, Bellroy has released an updated range of cases. Unlike the first run, which had a cutout over the Action Button that could make it hard to reach in and press, the new designs have a more standard integrated button.
“The new design includes another button on the case to give the same functionality and experience as the actual device. It’s a lot more natural and seamless,” says Bellroy’s head of product development Arya Ghavifekr. Bellroy says anyone who bought its first run of cases with the cutout will be able to exchange them for the new model. It’s continuing to sell the old cases that had cutouts at a discounted rate, but it’s selling them with a “button add-on” that fills the cutout with a retrofit button.
In late September, we wrote about the minefield that the iPhone 15 Pro case market had become as a result of the new Action Button. Case manufacturers are put in a difficult situation each year when the new iPhone gets released; they want to have their products available quickly to benefit from everyone who upgrades their phones, but most of them don’t get specs for the new phones until after they’re publicly launched. So manufacturers had to make an educated guess about whether to design their cases to account for the rumored action button, or to hedge with a cutout that could (and did) make the button harder to access.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25073196/14_Standalone___Shadow.jpg?w=100&resize=100,100&ssl=1 "Of course Dbrand’s first novelty keycaps include a “fuck off” key")