My Thoughts on the Design of the iPhone 5

[hjm]

My thoughts on the iPhone 5's design are as follows:

• In the Introducing iOS 5 video on Apple's website, they showed a feature but didn't mention it. This was getting all your fingers and pinching them inwards. This resulted in taking you back to the home screen. This means that Apple are expanding from a physical home button to a gesture initiated home button. This makes me think that the iPhone 5 wont have a physical home button, and this will possibly increase the screen size.

• Will the next generation iPhone have physical volume up/down buttons? I doubt it. Currently every iPhone ships with a Apple earbud with a volume up/down button on the wire. Many external headphone manufacturers are doing this also (Beats by Dre, Bose etc.). Why do you need the volume up/down on the device when you can have it on your earphones?

• I hope the iPhones aren't going completely buttonless, however. If the iOS freezes and you need to restart the device, then you need to have a hardware button that can do this. I also like the iPad 2's integration of a landscape/portrait lock hardware button.

Let me know your ideas on this.

Regards,

hjm.

PS The iOS introduction video is here: Apple - Introducing iOS 5 - YouTube
The feature that I am talking about is at 0:26.

 

[anon(4698833)]

- The upcoming iPhone will unquestionably have a home button of some sort, will it always be there? Who knows, but i don't think the gesture based "return to home" feature is ready to eliminate a home button, not yet anyways, they still have to see if consumers actually WANT that feature over a physical button, and it would be foolish for them to gamble on an assumption it is preferred over the physical button. I'd be willing to put large quantities of money on the next iPhone having a physical home button.

- Yes, it needs volume buttons (and will have them)...i have NEVER used the headset provided with my iPhone 4, it's still in the package with the plastic wrap on it (and i know I'm not alone on that). They would not replace the volume rocker with the headset volume control only...that would be foolish.

- I doubt Apple would eliminate your ability to reset the iPhone manually...i wouldn't worry about that.

 

[Fausty82]

- The upcoming iPhone will unquestionably have a home button of some sort, will it always be there? Who knows, but i don't think the gesture based "return to home" feature is ready to eliminate a home button, not yet anyways, they still have to see if consumers actually WANT that feature over a physical button, and it would be foolish for them to gamble on an assumption it is preferred over the physical button. I'd be willing to put large quantities of money on the next iPhone having a physical home button.

- Yes, it needs volume buttons (and will have them)...i have NEVER used the headset provided with my iPhone 4, it's still in the package with the plastic wrap on it (and i know I'm not alone on that). They would not replace the volume rocker with the headset volume control only...that would be foolish.

- I doubt Apple would eliminate your ability to reset the iPhone manually...i wouldn't worry about that.

I completely agree here, Sean. No way Apple eliminates the volume buttons. Ever. They will always have to be there in some capacity... and there will also always be a need for a reset procedure, which, again, will require some kind of hardware switch - either a button, or a recessed button activated with a paperclip, a la the current crop of routers/hubs/switches... but there needs to be a way to force the device to reset.

I could see the home button going away someday, but I doubt it will be in the iPhone 5... They could put the 5-finger pinch in the OS, but the next iPhone/iPad/iPod will have a home button.

 

[jsntrenkler]

I agree with the above, there will always be volume buttons and some sort of hardware button. Pinch in to home is a neat gesture, although for those of us with large hands it isn't very practical.

 

[Cheggy]

I agree with the above, there will always be volume buttons and some sort of hardware button. Pinch in to home is a neat gesture, although for those of us with large hands it isn't very practical.

Or those of us with only 4 fingers :-/

 

[BlackBerry Guy]

You will need physical volume buttons so that you can change the volume of your phone as you talk without having to take it away from your ear.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

 

[riley9dy]

Like everyone else said, I am pretty sure they wills till have all f the physical buttons they have now.. and even if they do eventually get rid of the home button in a later model they will always have some kind f button to do hard resets when needed

 

[sting7k]

Doesn't iOS 5 also allow you to use one of the volume buttons as a shutter release for the camera? They wouldn't add that and then take out the buttons.

 

[Fausty82]

Doesn't iOS 5 also allow you to use one of the volume buttons as a shutter release for the camera? They wouldn't add that and then take out the buttons.

Indeed it does... and this makes sense... the buttons will always be there in one form or another, IMO.

 

[redbeard]

I hope the home button goes away, it gets over-used and mine barely works anymore, and it takes up a lot of space. Like others mentioned they could put one of those tiny little recessed buttons hidden in the dock connector for the times you need to do a hard reset or go into DFU mode..

 

[riley9dy]

I hope the home button goes away, it gets over-used and mine barely works anymore, and it takes up a lot of space. Like others mentioned they could put one of those tiny little recessed buttons hidden in the dock connector for the times you need to do a hard reset or go into DFU mode..

Wait when you say it barely works, you mean it actually doesn't work when you press it??

 

[redbeard]

Wait when you say it barely works, you mean it actually doesn't work when you press it??

Yup, works maybe 10% of the time, and it's very common, the home button just has too much work to do.

 

[Fausty82]

Yup, works maybe 10% of the time, and it's very common, the home button just has too much work to do.

I would question the "it's very common" part of your statement. I know many iPhone users (I have 9 in my family)... and none of us has this issue... so you may have a problem, you may have a defective unit, you may have issues with software/jailbreak/whatever, but it's NOT a "very common" problem in my experience.

 

[riley9dy]

I would question the "it's very common" part of your statement. I know many iPhone users (I have 9 in my family)... and none of us has this issue... so you may have a problem, you may have a defective unit, you may have issues with software/jailbreak/whatever, but it's NOT a "very common" problem in my experience.

Yea thats what I was thinking... I don't think this is too common.. Apple might be able to fix it for free if you take it to the store

 

[redbeard]

I would question the "it's very common" part of your statement. I know many iPhone users (I have 9 in my family)... and none of us has this issue... so you may have a problem, you may have a defective unit, you may have issues with software/jailbreak/whatever, but it's NOT a "very common" problem in my experience.

Common as far as problems though seems to be the thing, other than the home button I haven't heard of really any hardware problems..

They have a huge thread about it on Macrumors Tempermental iPhone 4 home button 4.1 - MacRumors Forums

Huge one on Apple's site as well https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2595841?tstart=30

So to me, going with a capacitive button removes the most used moving part on the iPhone and the biggest hardware problem. I believe they will do it as soon as they figure out a good way, I know Jobs never even wated the iPhone to have a home button.

 

[Skysurfer]

So to me, going with a capacitive button removes the most used moving part on the iPhone and the biggest hardware problem. I believe they will do it as soon as they figure out a good way, I know Jobs never even wated the iPhone to have a home button.

Killing off a physical home button means true multitasking a la WebOS. But based on what folks are saying about iOS5, the iPhone home button aint dead, yet.

~L

 

[Jellotime91]

Skysurfer,

How exactly does killing off the home button introduce "true multitasking"? It annoys me to no end that people think the GUI reflects the way processes are actually being handled. Changing the way you interact with the device would not change the way processes are being handled by the OS, and if you're suggesting Apple will adopt HP's interface... You're SOL there.

There is nothing that irks me more than the phrase "true multitasking" these days.

 

[redbeard]

Yea what is true multi-tasking? The iPhone seems to handle it just fine, every os does it differently, some better than others.

I think the only drawback to a touch home button is inadvertent hits, but maybe they can make it respond only to dedicated touches and not something like a swipe in a game??? It would free up a lot of space for a larger screen.

 

[anon(4698833)]

The term has grown into an entirely different monster than what it initially meant...which was actually quite simple...something that could function doing multiple things. Now in order to be truly multitasking, you pretty much have to own an android based phone...which is hilarious to me.

 

[Skysurfer]

Skysurfer,

How exactly does killing off the home button introduce "true multitasking"? It annoys me to no end that people think the GUI reflects the way processes are actually being handled. Changing the way you interact with the device would not change the way processes are being handled by the OS, and if you're suggesting Apple will adopt HP's interface... You're SOL there.

There is nothing that irks me more than the phrase "true multitasking" these days.

Jellotime91,

From an engineering standpoint, I completely agree with you...and the subsequent posts. However, my perspective is the overall user experience that the Apple team strives to achieve. And I do not have a better choice of terminology than the the one taken (misappropriated?) from "engineers" and adopted by the crews that are not.

As for the physical home button, its existence runs contrary to the dynamic, gesture-driven interface.

Lawrence