I hate physical button, I love virtual control

[betabeta]

Not a fan of the physical button, but also not a fan of some of the other phones without one, it's just not done right yet....but soon. Future phone should be a solid smooth slab with no buttons, holes or openings or edges at all and completely water proof and shock proof.

It will recognize your fingerprints and hand when you pick it up, you can decide the areas for touch sensitive controls, like multitasking and volume. And no headset jack, all wireless, wireless charging and the glass or surface would act as a speaker as well (which is already being done)

All this is completely plausible, the entire slab will be a touch sensitive screen with touch areas on the sides and back that have real haptic feedback for real feedback feel.

The idea of a physical button will seem ludicrous, and Jony Ive will finally be happy and smile.

 

[albertxp06]

I don't have much experience with Sense but on the One its a grid of 3x3. Was it different in the past?

Woah geez people calm down. Just because I said it takes hints from doesn't mean it copied directly. And OK, fine, WebOS had it first.

Anyway, on the One X it was very similar to iOS 7, just with a angled view. Haven't had time to play with the One though.

 

[C DM]

Assistive touch brings up a menu when you tap the virtual home button.

the physical home button has 4 functions:

1. tap
2. tap + hold (like to trigger siri)
3. double tap
4. triple tap

If Apple was to get rid of the physical home button they would need to be able to replace it with a virtual button that takes the same 4 commands. like I said I dont think a virtual button can work that way.

----------



like I mentioned to Sak the virtual home button would need to be able to reproduce the physical home button's 4 functions tap, tap and hold, tap 2 times, tap 3 times.

It doesn't seem like a virtual button can't be set up to respond to all of that. Plus other things can come into at to take over some if those actions, like particular gestures to do what a triple button press might do, etc.

 

[darngooddesign]

No, actually they didn't. It came straight out of webOS.

The style is out of the iPhone Safari tabs from 2007. The flick to close is from webOS.

 

[3bs]

Woah geez people calm down. Just because I said it takes hints from doesn't mean it copied directly. And OK, fine, WebOS had it first.

Anyway, on the One X it was very similar to iOS 7, just with a angled view. Haven't had time to play with the One though.

I'm pretty calm..

 

[newdeal]

i have a galaxy s2 with capacative buttons and it is really good, the iphone is nice also but with capactive buttons the back and home and menu are all within reach instead of having to move your finger to the top of the screen to go back or go to settings

 

[JetBlack7]

You have an option in accessibility options to enable assistive touch which works just like the physical button without having to touch it (the button).

 

[Ashin]

My home button is a little bit bad now.

I wish assistive touch was more customizable... let the button act as a home button... and triple clicking it opens the menu or something

 

[kas23]

Having had one break on me, I don't have much faith in the iPhone home button. I cringe every time I need to bring up multitasking. There should be a multitouch gesture to accomplish this, to at least preserve the longevity of the home button.

 

[MisakixMikasa]

You have an option in accessibility options to enable assistive touch which works just like the physical button without having to touch it (the button).

The problem of assist ice touch is that this thing is floating around the screen and blocking your views...it is very annoying especially with iPhone's tiny screen... I love my Nexus 4 because of the larger screen (I am crying for bigger iPhone for years, bring 5 inch iPhone and 6 inch iPhone) and he touch control on the bottom. It is much more efficient than physics home screen and you don't have to deal wih broken home screen when your iDevice is out if warranty.

 

[Brittany246]

I definitely prefer physical home buttons. One of the things I didn't like about my Nexus 7 was that there was a black bar taking up screen space at all times. I would sometimes accidentally close out of apps, and I always felt like I needed to avoid the bottom area of the touch screen when I was using an app. It was pretty annoying. With iOS devices, I don't have to be cautious about where I'm touching the screen.

 

[sflomenb]

No, I disagree. It's not plausible to have virtual buttons replace physical ones completely. When your phone isn't working, you need physical buttons to restart it.

 

[Slumpey]

Can you do it on iPhone?

Yea. more virtual options thru Jailbreaking. It's called Activator. I have a broken home button so I rely on this heavily. But that doesn't really help the people looking at this thread.

 

[macred]

So what happens when your virtual button doesn't work because your virtual screen isn't responding to your virtual touch?

The odds of this happening are in our favor against it.

When is the last time the touch display on any iPhone stopped working ?

The reason Apples iPhones have the old tech mechanical buttons is it's guaranteed failure rate. At some point, once out of warranty the button will fail. Then Apple gets more of your money as they sell you a new phone. 100% reliability is not in Apples best interest.

Apple didn't get to be one of the richest companies by building 100% reliable products.

 

[ERIC273]

Would you prefer a spiritual button?

 

[C DM]

The odds of this happening are in our favor against it.

When is the last time the touch display on any iPhone stopped working ?

The reason Apples iPhones have the old tech mechanical buttons is it's guaranteed failure rate. At some point, once out of warranty the button will fail. Then Apple gets more of your money as they sell you a new phone. 100% reliability is not in Apples best interest.

Apple didn't get to be one of the richest companies by building 100% reliable products.

Ah, so it's all really because of a corporate conspiracy.

 

[Armen]

The odds of this happening are in our favor against it.

When is the last time the touch display on any iPhone stopped working ?

The reason Apples iPhones have the old tech mechanical buttons is it's guaranteed failure rate. At some point, once out of warranty the button will fail. Then Apple gets more of your money as they sell you a new phone. 100% reliability is not in Apples best interest.

Apple didn't get to be one of the richest companies by building 100% reliable products.

So then why is it the home button on the iPhone 5 is more durable than the iPhone 4? It's distinctive click vs the iphone 4's spongy button.

 

[Stuntman06]

The physical home button is great for waking the phone when it is in the car mount. I don't have to reach to top or side for the power button to wake the phone.

 

[C DM]

The physical home button is great for waking the phone when it is in the car mount. I don't have to reach to top or side for the power button to wake the phone.

Don't think that kind of experience would change much with a touch capable button or controls that would typically be located in the same area of the lower portion of the front screen when it comes to waking the phone up (if not even apply to the whole screen as is the case already with some phones out there)

 

[Stuntman06]

Don't think that kind of experience would change much with a touch capable button or controls that would typically be located in the same area of the lower portion of the front screen when it comes to waking the phone up (if not even apply to the whole screen as is the case already with some phones out there)

My understanding is that when most phones are in sleep mode, you need to press a physical button to wake the phone. On my old HTC Desire Z that doesn't have a physical home button, I have to press the power button which is on the top of the phone. The trackpad button doesn't wake the phone and the capcitive home button doesn't wake the phone either. On my SGS3, I can wake the phone by pressing the power button, but I can also wake the phone by pressing the physical home button.

There are phones where you can double tap the screen to wake the phone. The Nokia N9 has this feature. Nokia is also incorporating this feature on their Windows phones.

 

[Atrin1]

i like the new multi-tasking view in iOS 7 and i also like the multi tasking view on my nexus 7 tablet. the home button is fine on the iphone. out of all the generations of iphones i've had, none of the home buttons have failed on me.

my nexus tablet, is just so slow and buggy even compared to my iphone 5. i bought it because it was on sale, and i wanted to try android out. There are goods and bads. the on screen widgets and customization and ability to use a USB flash drive is great. but iOS is a much better operating system. its fast, smooth, and i very very rarely have to reboot it.

i've tried liking the android devices but after 4 months of this nexus 7, i'm ready to give it to a niece or nephew and buy an ipad mini 2

 

[C DM]

My understanding is that when most phones are in sleep mode, you need to press a physical button to wake the phone. On my old HTC Desire Z that doesn't have a physical home button, I have to press the power button which is on the top of the phone. The trackpad button doesn't wake the phone and the capcitive home button doesn't wake the phone either. On my SGS3, I can wake the phone by pressing the power button, but I can also wake the phone by pressing the physical home button.

There are phones where you can double tap the screen to wake the phone. The Nokia N9 has this feature. Nokia is also incorporating this feature on their Windows phones.

Right, there are touch-based features like that that can be used when there's no physical (home) button and/or in addition to one.

 

[Armen]

Don't think that kind of experience would change much with a touch capable button or controls that would typically be located in the same area of the lower portion of the front screen when it comes to waking the phone up (if not even apply to the whole screen as is the case already with some phones out there)

I can see it now, pocket "wake ups" because people's legs rub against the virtual home button.

 

[cmichaelb]

But they did definitely take a page out of the multitasking in HTC's Sense...

Which took a page from WebOS. WebOS was well ahead of it's time.

----------

Even without a fingerprint reader, a physical home button is the way to go.

Actually, it came straight out of Safari's tabs.

Amen. My beef with Android devices is no physical home button.

Safari? I never even considered that, nice catch. I just assumed WebOS.

Plus the horizontal layout doesn't contrast with previous iOS versions.

 

[JetBlack7]

The problem of assist ice touch is that this thing is floating around the screen and blocking your views...it is very annoying especially with iPhone's tiny screen... I love my Nexus 4 because of the larger screen (I am crying for bigger iPhone for years, bring 5 inch iPhone and 6 inch iPhone) and he touch control on the bottom. It is much more efficient than physics home screen and you don't have to deal wih broken home screen when your iDevice is out if warranty.

Personally I think you can get used to it