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iPhone losing the home button?

Guys, remember there were rumors about Apple utilizing touch-capacitive back on the iPhone?

I think that's exactly what's gonna happen on future iPhones: no home button, swipe down to reveal multitasking bar, swipe left/right to switch apps, double-tap to go back to home screen, etc.

:cool:
 
I like the home button just fine and I HATE gestures.

Also, the home button is the only way, at a glance, to tell which end of the phone is up.

It's one of the things about the iPhone I like over the competition.
 
I've been trying not to on the iPhone 4, but it's still getting less responsive, especially when I try to double click.
Click to expand...

...totally agree with this! Sometimes when I double-click, the phone takes me to the 'Spotlight' search and other times it opens up the multi-tasking dock showing the currently open apps!??! Its totally random - I've tried double-clicking fastly (hardly any gap between the 2 clicks) and also slowly (leaving a slight delay before the second click) but its still the same result...!! Really gets on my nerves.....!!!:mad:
 
Hmmm... looks like Apple are headed for another lose/lose situation! If they remove the home button they will polarise existing users, and if they keep it their detractors will accuse them of using outdated technology!
 
This seems like a colossally bad idea. Those seeing this as a chance for more screen real estate, will soon find that the loss of a physical button and full reliance on gestures will become more of a headache than anything.
 
fishmoose said:
It's not going to happen, think about the visually impaired users etc it would kill the device for so many people.

John Gruber has some good thoughts on it:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/12/bgr-home-button

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/12/gestures-home-buttons
Click to expand...
I don't see how removing the home button would affect visually impaired users?
Fair point for people who are missing fingers or have limited mobility, etc. as the gestures could be hard or impossible to do!
 
fishmoose said:
...think about the visually impaired users...
Click to expand...
And you think the removal of the home button would make any significance for this group of users?
I mean, think about the tiny onscreen keyboard (even with zoom enabled) and all the other little "hard-to-see" onscreen buttons for a minute.

ZilogZ80 said:
...Fair point for people who are missing fingers or have limited mobility, etc. as the gestures could be hard or impossible to do!
Click to expand...
Fair point. But with this logic it is impossible to advance technology.
To exaggerate a little bit: Why implement voice calling - think about the deaf people.

But I understand the problem.
Being forced to use a five finger gesture to use the iPhone at all would be a disadvantage.
 
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jessica. said:
Those seeing this as a chance for more screen real estate, will soon find that the loss of a physical button and full reliance on gestures will become more of a headache than anything.
Click to expand...
On the iPhone, I agree. It's too cramped. Works great on the iPad tho (check out the videos). It may be forced on the iPhone though - I expect Apple will want to make the user experience on both devices as consistent as possible.
 
^ It works great in videos but in real life application it may not work so great. Unless they somehow perfected it straight out of the box (per se) then I don't see this being ready to remove a hardware button.
 
I don't think it's going anywhere. How will I use my iPhone with one hand if there's no button?

palmerc2 said:
I doubt even the maxiPad would lose it's home button.

We need both the home button and sleep/wake button in order to do a hard reset in the event of a malfunction, which does happen. I needed to do it the other day. Also yes, the iPhones screen is much too small for 5 finger gestures. With the maxiPad, what if someone only has 4 fingers? It will not replace it. End of story

It's been part of the iPhone since day 1, I doubt it will ever be removed
Click to expand...


MaxiPad. Wow. Just wow. :rolleyes:
 
while the argument about the 'four-fingered' is a bit far fetched, i'd still wonder how i'd be able to properly navigate the iPhone with one hand (basically, only my thumb) then ...
the home button is such a great button in a way that it's easy to explain to your granpa (true story btw) 'if you ever get lost within a program, this one button will ALWAYS take you back to the homescreen"

i see how the ADDED gestures work really nicely on the iPad, the swiping looks just so damn fine

but while you use the ipad with your HAND, you use the iPhone with your FINGER.
so neither do i really see these gestures coming to the iPhone, nor do i see the home button vanishing from either device.

you need the 'somewhat' thick bezel on the iPad for holding purposes anyways ...
 
I just have to add that removing the home button and adding gestures is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. "gestures" is for a minority of geekish users and the idea that they'd dump something like this on the mass market is a joke.

Look at all the Android phones out there where they have touch sensitive home (and other) buttons. THAT's how you get rid of the home button (which I still disagree with), not making some silly swiping motion mandatory. Nope. Can't see it.
 
so, btw
take out your phone, unlock it. i would assume 90% of you cup the phone, use your thumb on the home button and then the same thumb to swipe.

now tell me how that'd work without a home button.
sure, you could use the power / sleep button ... but then the swipe to unlock motion would be very unnatural. (for your index finger to reach the power button and your thumb to reach the swipe-to-unlock bar, you either need REALLY big hands or you have to unnaturaly bend your thumb down)

so while i do see SOME gestures as a nice plus (when using the phone in 'PDA mode' (with your second hand doing the touching), like 3 finger swipe to taskswitch, i do not see any way it could lose that bottom button entirely
 
Doubt it,

While extra gestures are nice, but using them everyday on the iPhone would become very annoying.

If they lose the "Home" button, they should redesign the UI to incorporate the "Home" button next to the "Back" button on the UI.

Nokia N900 and MeeGo do the multitasking without a "Home" button best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7emvUBpEkbU&fmt=22
 
I have gazed into my crystal ball to see the future:

No front mounted home button on iPad3
 
rdowns said:
I don't think it's going anywhere. How will I use my iPhone with one hand if there's no button?




MaxiPad. Wow. Just wow. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Clearly you don't get it, it's called an iPad...but when people see "pad" they think of the pads some women use during their period. So what he did there was to make a play on words to say that the iPad is like a MaxiPad. Seriously, you'll start laughing any second.

Oh topic, I agree, a multitouch unlock isn't going to cut it if I'm carrying something in my other hand.
 
removing the home key from the phone would be nice to expand the screen but i like it and how the phone works now.
 
Well, remember that Apple hired (rehired?) some of the UI designers that did WebOS... which has gestures and even a gesture area.

So I think WebOS has some influence, along with Android tablets gaining onscreen buttons that move with each re-orientation.

As for the Home button being many people's anchor point, that's definitely true. Someone I know calls iPhone users "the one-button people", for obvious reasons, to differentiate that type of user from others.
 
If you haven't tried a palm pre, please do so ifyou can find one, the way it uses gestures is so much better than the navigation on the iPhone. I'm not talking about those four fingered gestures apple has on the iPad, I would hate it they did that on the iPhone, but a gesture area on the bottom like webos, where half swipe back is the back gesture, half swipe forward is the forward gesture, swipe up brings up the multi-task bar, a tap brings up the home screen, double tap brings up favorites, and full swipe left or right switches to the next app. Palm got so many things right with webos (other than hardware, carrier, and 3rd party support) and this is a biggie. If it does get implemented I hope it's this way.
 
Can somebody make a nice Mockup of how the iPhone would look like without the home button? I made one, but it's kind of ugly :p

My guess is that if there's no home button they can shrink the phone:
 

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