Pressy is a new project funded by backers on Kickstarter which is quite simply a button you place in your headphone jack. Once plugged in you can customise the function of this new button so if you wanted a button to take pictures, turn on the flash to see in the dark, quickly switch your phone to silent, or anything else then this will do that for you.
In recent years physical buttons have been disappearing from mobile phones to the extent that many phones now have no buttons left which aren’t tied to a specific action. The iPhone changed things by only having a single button on the front of the phone and even that will only take you back to the home screen. Since then other phones have taken a similar approach with the 4 button layout found on most early Android phones is down to just a couple of buttons on most new Android handsets.
The lack of customisable buttons on most modern phones can be a bit of a pain, if you add shortcuts on your home or even lock screen there can still be a bit of messing about and if you have too many shortcuts then it becomes almost as cumbersome to access apps as it would be just using the menu. Pressy comes with an app that enables you to decide what you want the button can do and using a short press, a long press and a multiple presses you can have a various different functions set up. By default one press turns on your flashlight, a long press switches silent mode on an off (you can do this pretty quickly with the volume keys normally so this is one you might want to replace) and a double click to take a photo.
$17 (about £11) is all it takes to get a Pressy through their Kickstarter project, or it you don’t like the default black model then other colours will set you back just a little more, with estimated delivery in early 2014. Pressy is a simple but useful accessory for your phone and while not essential many will find it very useful to have an additional, customisable button on their Android device.