The iPhone X is easily the best phone I’ve ever owned. And in almost every way, it performs exactly as I would like it to. There is just one problem, a thing that might seem so minor as to not be an issue at all but is the one thing that regularly makes me contemplate chucking my $1,000 gadget against a brick wall.
Screenshots.
To take a screenshot on the iPhone X, you simply press the side button on the right and one of the volume buttons on the left. The side button also powers the phone on and off, activates Siri, and locks the phone, so you’re hitting it all the time. All of the buttons positioned conveniently in the exact spot where I naturally hold my phone. The result is that it’s easy to take a screenshot—but I would argue that it’s simply too easy, to the point where I’m accidentally taking screenshots all the time. Pick up my phone to turn off the alarm in the morning—screenshot. Go to lock the phone—another screenshot. Just scrolling through Twitter—another goddamn screenshot. At first, you think it’s going to be one of those things like new home button gesture that’ll have a learning curve, but I’ve had the iPhone X six months now, and it’s still happening all the time
I’m frustrated as hell, and I’m not alone. Accidental-screenshot rage is a regular topic of complaint on Reddit and other Apple forums, where people regularly rail against the problem. “iPhone X is my ultimate unwanted screenshot machine,” redditor mrqpa recently wrote—a sentiment apparently shared by the thousands of people who upvoted his gripe.
Snapping an errant screenshot once in a while—or, in my case, multiple times a day—wouldn’t be a huge deal if you could easily delete the image. You can swipe it off your screen, but it’s still saved, cluttering up your photo album with useless pictures of your screen at random moments. The quickest way to delete the image without saving it is to tap on it, click “done,” and then click “Delete screenshot”—three steps to undo a thing you never meant to do in the first place.
Apple doesn’t currently offer a way to turn off this feature in the settings or change how to engage the screenshot feature. And I’m not saying they should eliminate the feature entirely—screenshots can be useful! But there must be a better way. For example, Apple could make screenshots an iOS gesture rather than being activated by the easy-to-hit buttons.
Anyone who’s used iOS 11 knows it’s full of faults—so much so that Apple has reportedly held off rolling out flashy new features in iOS 12 just so it can fix all the problems with the current mobile OS. With Apple set to reveal iOS 12 on Monday at WWDC, I’m praying the company addresses this annoying screenshot flaw.