I love buttons. I like them in cars (sorry, touchscreens), I like them in my games (not sorry, iPad touchscreen controls), and I love them on my phones. I’m apparently not alone in that love for phone buttons, and more and more phone makers are taking note. Even Apple, for all of its contributions to the world of touchscreens, is hopping on that tangible train, adopting the Action Button, its programmable key for launching basically anything you want, and the Camera Control, which controls your camera (duh), including shutter, launching the camera app, etc.
But as much as I love buttons on my phone, there is one button I’ve yet to fully come around to, and it’s seemingly slated to be the next big pushable thing on your phone—I’m talking about the trendy new “AI button.” AI buttons are real, physical, tactile keys that do exactly what they sound like—they trigger AI features. More and more phones in recent months have been adopting them, too.
There’s Nothing’s “Essential Key,” which is a button on the side of the company’s phones (Nothing and its cheaper CMF phones like the Phone 2 Pro) that can look at what you’re doing on your device and take certain actions. For example, if you’re looking at tickets for a show, you could smash the Essential Key and then tell your phone to remind you to buy tickets at a later date/time.
Similarly, Motorola and its high-end Razr Ultra flip-style foldable includes an “AI Key” that triggers a host of AI features like “next move,” which can automatically open apps or provide suggestions based on what you’re doing on your phone at the time. It can also activate AI features like “look and talk,” which combines Moto AI with a voice assistant to help you use your phone hands-free when you’re in “tent mode.”
And the dedicated button party doesn’t stop there. Just this week, OnePlus announced its 13S phone, which does away with the company’s signature Alert Slider switch in favor of the Plus Key button. In OnePlus’s defense, the Plus Key is similarly all-purpose and programmable like Apple’s Action Button but seems to also be geared heavily towards activating AI Plus Mind, a feature that’s very similar to Nothing’s Essential Space.
Smarter than ever. The all-new OnePlus AI- intelligently yours, coming to the #OnePlus13s
June 5th, 12 noon.
Know more: https://t.co/A7QMMvVAT3 pic.twitter.com/6uv8RRz5bQ
— OnePlus India (@OnePlus_IN) May 27, 2025
And on the one hand, this all makes sense. AI is the Next Big Thing, according to *checks notes* everyone who makes gadgets right now, so of course that ethos is going to inform hardware as well as software. On the other hand, there’s kind of a big problem with the whole AI button craze, and that’s that a lot of people just aren’t really using AI enough to justify a whole-ass button yet. Recent polling from CNET suggests that the overwhelming number of people (73% of iPhone users and 87% of Samsung users, to be exact) who can use AI on their devices say that they think the features add little to no value to their general phone experience. Contrast that sentiment with the fact that phone makers think AI features are important enough to stand among the ranks of (and this is the truth) the power/lock button.
And that’s not the only downside to the AI button. There’s also the fact that this new crop of buttons may actually be an insidious billboard for both AI and AI subscriptions. According to Android Authority, which did a teardown of the Essential Space app in March, plans for monetization may be on the horizon for Nothing. While the company has given no official indication that it intends to turn Essential Space into a money-making machine, according to the teardown, the company’s AI app may not come cheap if and when that moment arrives. The teardown suggests that Nothing could charge as much as $120 to use Essential Space, though it’s unclear if that’s an annual subscription or a one-time fee.
I love physical buttons as much as the next nerd, but when you’re dealing with the limitations of the physical world and the need for practicality that goes along with it, I’m not sure that AI quite rises to the occasion yet. Maybe that will change, and Apple Intelligence will soon warrant its coveted spot next to the Camera Control, but for now, I’m guessing most of your AI button presses might be the result of an accident while trying to do something truly useful, like locking your phone.
