Let’s be honest with ourselves here; if we were to take a random collection of smartphones from a random group of people, and load up the Photos app, then the chances are that the gallery would be littered with multiple selfies that have most likely been shared to social media sites like Facebook or Instagram. In all honesty, there’s nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that smartphone manufacturers like Apple don’t exactly make it easy for device owners to snap photographs of themselves using one hand, especially on larger devices like the iPhone 6s Plus. This may be common sense to some of you, but a lot of people will simply have no idea that you can actually use your EarPods as a wired controller for taking photos. Mind blown, right?
The iPhone camera shutter button is located in such a position that it’s very difficult to hold the smartphone in one hand, pull off that legendary pout, and actually manage to hit the shutter button and get it right the first time. Sure, you can use the hardware-based volume buttons on the side to snap the picture, but that can sometimes be just as fiddly and tricky to achieve, most often resulting in shaky results. Apple’s wired headphones to the rescue!
It actually makes perfect sense when you think about it. Apple natively allows the volume buttons to be used on the iPhone to take a photograph. When connected, a set of EarPods has a small remote on the cable which allows volume to be controlled on the device when listening to music or making a phone call. That means that the same volume controls on the headphones will actually replicate the functionality of the hardware volume buttons on the phone when in the Camera app. Of course, you’re limited by the length of the cable, so there will have to be some intelligent placing of the device going on to be able to get that perfect selfie, but at least it gives us little more flexibility over trying to do it with one outstretched arm.
How about we tell you that you can replicate this exact functionality with a Bluetooth wireless headset as well? Any compatible Bluetooth headset with volume controls will allow you the freedom to place your phone anywhere within range and trigger its camera shutter wirelessly.
Holding down the volume button, you can take burst photos, similar to how you would do that on your iPhone by holding down the shutter button in the Camera app. Got an iPad or iPod touch? No problem, it works in exactly the same manner on iPads and iPod touches as well.
If you didn’t know this type of functionality was possible, then you might want to use it as much as possible before you upgrade to Apple’s new iPhone 7 range this coming September. It’s widely accepted that Apple will design the new iPhone without the iconic 3.5mm headphone jack, meaning no more wired headphones, at least not the same as we have now. Apple will likely introduce a Bluetooth or Lightning-enabled set of EarPods with the new device, so we’ll have to wait and see what transpires from there.
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