Live data from Hacker News

New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

theverge.com

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#51

Am I the only person who uses the physical home button to feel for which way is up when pulling the phone out their pocket? I'm going to look like an idiot 50% of the time i pull my phone out once that button goes virtual.

Ironically, there's only a concept of "up" because of the very same home button. If you remove the home button then there is no up and down, since the virtual home button would always rotate to the bottom per gravity.

There's also the speaker and mic, the power and volume buttons, and the toggle switch (mute/rotate/etc).

If they could use identical transducers that perform well as both speaker and mic, then I'm sure the remaining buttons could be made virtual as well (full touch-sensitive sidebars maybe?), although personally I like having certain buttons implemented as physical devices.

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#52
post #5

As a developer I'm more or less required to keep up with new hardware developments but I'm still fine with my 6S with 3D touch. The rest of the new hardware features work fine within a simulator. I'd rather buy an iPad Pro than a new phone this year. But I didn't like the design of the iPhone 6 compared to the 4 and 5. It's good to see it change finally. The 4 and 5 looked like a piece of futuristic technology, like…

Same on the 6S. Not the least because of the audio jack. But the removal of the fingerprint reader is another problem. Looking at your iphone for face recognition is one thing but how can you discretely check your emails during a meeting?

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#53

Am I the only person who uses the physical home button to feel for which way is up when pulling the phone out their pocket? I'm going to look like an idiot 50% of the time i pull my phone out once that button goes virtual.

Wouldn't it be better if it worked both ways up? Why shouldn't it?

I always leave the screen rotation locked as it otherwise gets confused when my head is not vertical (in bed) and tries to adjust the wrong way.

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#54
post #9

Handling a smart phone is already stressful enough. You can't touch the entire front of phone in fear of accidentally tapping something, even if the screen is off because it might turn on at any moment. With tap to wake you have to worry about just bumping it and with facial expressions you'd literally need to be concerned about just looking at it funny.

Somehow, I think Apple probably thought about this before making a change to their flagship phone. They have many options, including making the "tap" a force touch. So requiring a certain amount of pressure before actually turning on. Or requiring a double tap. Or being more of a "tap to unlock" using raise to wake.

>Somehow, I think Apple probably thought about this before making a change to their flagship phone.

Like how they thought about how a user's hand could short the antenna circuit with the iPhone 4? Not to entirely discredit the effort their engineers put into these phones, but oversights happen and some aren't discovered until you get enough hands on the device.

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#55
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - there's a reason why the Android phones that have tap to wake require two taps in quick succession, or similar. It's very difficult to accidentally trigger it. The facial recognition stuff seems odd to me, in the sense that I can't really figure out what it would be used for (aside from a silly smile detector in the camera app), but hopefully it'll be locked behind permission prompts (or barely accessibl…

> Not really - there's a reason why the Android phones that have tap to wake require two taps in quick succession, or similar. It's very difficult to accidentally trigger it. That's not my experience. When I put the phone in my pocket I have to take care of positionning the back against my body otherwise my skin through the jeans trigger pocket calls.

I'll believe it. But Apple typically does better than the average Android phone when it comes to hardware sensors, I imagine they'll be able to detect the difference.

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#56
post #52
post #5

As a developer I'm more or less required to keep up with new hardware developments but I'm still fine with my 6S with 3D touch. The rest of the new hardware features work fine within a simulator. I'd rather buy an iPad Pro than a new phone this year. But I didn't like the design of the iPhone 6 compared to the 4 and 5. It's good to see it change finally. The 4 and 5 looked like a piece of futuristic technology, like…

Same on the 6S. Not the least because of the audio jack. But the removal of the fingerprint reader is another problem. Looking at your iphone for face recognition is one thing but how can you discretely check your emails during a meeting?

> Looking at your iphone for face recognition is one thing but how can you discretely check your emails during a meeting?

Facial recognition usually falls down in low-light situations as well, such as while laying in bed, or on a red-eye flight.

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#57
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - there's a reason why the Android phones that have tap to wake require two taps in quick succession, or similar. It's very difficult to accidentally trigger it. The facial recognition stuff seems odd to me, in the sense that I can't really figure out what it would be used for (aside from a silly smile detector in the camera app), but hopefully it'll be locked behind permission prompts (or barely accessibl…

> Not really - there's a reason why the Android phones that have tap to wake require two taps in quick succession, or similar. It's very difficult to accidentally trigger it. That's not my experience. When I put the phone in my pocket I have to take care of positionning the back against my body otherwise my skin through the jeans trigger pocket calls.

On the M8 it is done really simple: if it is upside-down, it can't wake from tapping. Super simple and fluent in daily life (once you know it).

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever think that they'd go back and bring back a headphone jack?

The leaks/articles that mention it? http://bgr.com/2017/05/18/iphone-8-release-date-near-specs-h...

That article claims the opposite.

Re: New iPhone leaks show tap to wake, attention detection, and virtual home button

#59
Removing the home button would be a mistake.

I know a novice user who sticks with iDevices (as opposed to Android) precisely because they have a physical home button. As they describe it, "it's a magic button that's always there and always gets you back out of whatever you're in". By contrast, they dislike Android devices because of the virtual buttons that are sometimes removed in favor of more content.

Usability is very much about consistency with whatever a user is used to, and I'd be surprised if there aren't quite a few more users with similar sensibilities who find the physical button simpler to deal with.

Post reply on HN