Some iPhone 16 Pro owners have already reported troubles with their new phone’s touchscreen, and it’s only been three days since its sale.
Some customers have reported unresponsiveness near the iPhone 16 Pro’s Camera Control button, which is thought to be related to the phone’s accidental contact detection technology. The problem occurs when users mistakenly rest their skin on that area of the phone.
@tomsguide New iPhone 16 users are reporting serious touchscreen response problems related to the area near the Camera Control button, as demoed in the video. Anyone else having this problem 🤔 #iphone16pro #iphonefail #iphone16 #newiphone #applevsandroid #iphonevsandroid #iphonenews #applenews #techtok #techfail #tech #phones #ios18 #tomsguide ♬ Yikes On Bikes – Atomica Music
Contact with the area just beside the new button appears to cause the screen to freeze for a brief period of time. However, 9to5Mac feels that it appears to be impacting all four borders of the screen, which is far more bothersome. Users allege they are no longer able to swipe or tap, and just the home bar remains operational, rendering the phone unusable.
Some customers believe that the issue is more noticeable when the phone is not in a cover, which could be another incentive to purchase one of the finest iPhone 16 Pro cases. However, this does not appear to fix the problem; rather, it reduces the frequency with which freezing occurs.
Khaos Tian on Mastodon really shows this issue occurring, revealing that when the iPhone 16 Pro’s palm rejection kicks in, the phone freezes and does not respond to any touch input. This shows that the palm rejection algorithm is overly sensitive.
That doesn’t explain why this issue isn’t impacting every iPhone 16 Pro user – one Reddit user even failed to reproduce the problem on a Pro running the iOS 18.1 beta.
If you’ve been experiencing this issue, you’ll need to avoid touching the area just beside the Camera Control button. Lest you want your phone to be temporarily inoperable. It’s not ideal, but until Apple organizes a software update to fix the overzealous palm rejection that’s your best option.
