It’s good UX - presumably most users want to turn off WiFi/bluetooth temporarily when using these buttons and this saves you from forgetting to turn it back on. I was delighted when they changed.
I agree it’d be nice to have a choice for how it works on your device, but current behavior would still be a good default.
> and this saves you from forgetting to turn it back on
Apple has since extended this helpful "innovation" to the power button, which no longer turns off iPhones, requiring a faraday bag to block WiFi/BT/UWB radios from communicating while iPhone is "powered off".
> With iOS 15, your iPhone is still traceable through the Find My network even when the device is powered off. It seems that with iOS 15, the phone is not really fully ‘powered off’, it stays in a low-power state and acts like an AirTag, allowing any nearby iOS device to pick up the Bluetooth signal and send back its location.
Afaik if you care about that, you should be able to fully turn off Find My integration?
The idea does have some benefit though. For example, if you enable “Express Transit” for Apple Pay and your phone runs out of battery, you still will be able to tap-to-pay for a subway / bus ride home. The payment NFC subsystem is also separate and has its own battery reserve.
As a half solution: You can create a Shortcut that turns of BT/Wi-Fi completely. You can then add that Shortcut to your home screen for easy access. That's what I do and it's way nicer than going to Settings, though I wish it was just in Control Center.
Go to the Shortcuts app that comes with the phone. You can create shortcuts to do just about anything, in this case you'd make one that sets WiFi to Off and sets Bluetooth to Off. Then that shortcut can be turned into an app icon that you can just press any time.
I called this a data grab from day 1 and stand by that. The amount of fellow iOS developers I've had argue for the "convenience" is astounding. There should be a settings toggle to control the auto-reenable behavior.
AirTags wouldn’t work as well if everyone’s phones weren’t constantly transmitting/receiving, for one thing, and grabbing data on all nearby WiFi SSIDs and beacons helps with location services and probably advertising.
Yeah, this behavior sounds a bit anti-user to me. The action pretty much boils down to,
"Oh, you disabled Bluetooth and left it that way? Well, we know better so we're going to turn it back on without your knowledge or approval. You're welcome."
I don't buy the convenience excuse either otherwise the behavior could be disabled if desired.
