Home button - design flaw?

[lordofthereef]

I've never seen another device that require so many functions go through a single button. Spare us your sarcastic nonsense, that some many people have posted that their home button has broken is proof enough of a bad design.

Not sarcasm, irony. There actually is a difference.

And I wasn't saying the design was good or bad, so telling me "plenty" of people with broken home buttons is a largely irrelevant response. The idea that Apple designed it such that it would break more quickly is pretty ludicrous. There are plenty of 4+ year old devices still in use today.

And for the record, a mouse gets WAY more clicks in its lifetime than than does this home button. On that topic, so does the trackpad on newer Apple laptops (along with the Magic track pad). Are these products then designed to break sooner so that they are quickly replaced? Of course not. Implying that would be equally ludicrous.

 

[ChrisTX]

I've never had a problem with my home button but the sleep/wake button on the other hand has broken twice on me.

 

[Geckotek]

Geckotek, the flaw I am suggesting is the makeup of the usage path flow of the device; all actions must go through the home button. Open an app, have to hit the button to go back to the home screen. Turning on the accessibility option solved it for me (thanks to the poster who mentioned that), but I still see it as a design flaw.

I understand exactly what you are saying and I completely disagree. In fact, it makes the device that much simpler to use. Again, if you could prove some sort of high failure rate, I'd back you. But out of all the broken iPhones I've seen in my life, only twice has it been due to a home button. (Most often it's due to a cracked screen.)

You can't call it a design flaw if the failure rate is within normal expectations. (Any mechanical or electronic part can and will have failures.)

----------

I've never had a problem with my home button but the sleep/wake button on the other hand has broken twice on me.

I've actually seen several broken mute buttons on the 3G and 3Gs, including a couple of my own. I'd wouldn't argue if someone called that a design flaw.

 

[ChrisTX]

I've actually seen several broken mute buttons on the 3G and 3Gs, including a couple of my own. I wouldn't argue if someone called that a design flaw.

Agreed, the first time it broke randomly one day just stopped working out of the blue, and Apple replaced it. This last time it was dropped, but was in an otter box case. However I've neglected to bring it in to Apple for fear it won't be replaced, and because it still works I just have to press it REALLY hard.

 

[mrsir2009]

My home button works fine. Under normal use it shouldn't break... No reason why it would, it seems pretty sturdy to me.