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How to Design Mobile Apps for One-Hand Usage

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Re: How to Design Mobile Apps for One-Hand Usage

#71

> 90% of the smartphones sold today have bigger than 5-inch displays. I want a smaller display but they're just not being made anymore. For the past few years if you wanted better specs, you _had_ to get the bigger model. iPhone SE still being in demand indicates that there's a market for people who want smaller phones, if given the choice.

The good news is that Apple will be releasing a new iPhone with a 4.7-inch display next month: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/apple-s-o...

Worth noting that the SE has a 4.0" screen so that is 0.7" larger.

Re: How to Design Mobile Apps for One-Hand Usage

#73
post #68
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then the UIs and OSes were less set in stone. Nowadays we have two mobile UIs: iOS and Android (while there's also the gesture-based SailfishOS [1]). Just like everyone's a Qwerty user, which isn't necessarily the most efficient, even on mobile (example [2]). Problem is, you can only deviate so much from the defaults/standards. [1] https://sailfishos.org/design/gestures/ [2] https://keybee.it/

No, not everyone is a QWERTY user. French are AZERTY[1], we are 70 millions. There is a really small fraction of the population able to type on QWERTY. Germans are QWERTZ, they are 86 millions. Scandinavians have their own QWERTY variation, where a lot of symbols are mapped differently. There is a whole world outside there, you know ? :) I agree with you on the point that those are not the most efficient layout nowad…

Even the UK keyboard can drive you nuts if you are an engineer and you are used to the US one. The Enter key has a different shape, the backtick and the backslash are placed differently.

Re: How to Design Mobile Apps for One-Hand Usage

#74
post #54

> 90% of the smartphones sold today have bigger than 5-inch displays. I want a smaller display but they're just not being made anymore. For the past few years if you wanted better specs, you _had_ to get the bigger model. iPhone SE still being in demand indicates that there's a market for people who want smaller phones, if given the choice.

What exactly do you mean by "in demand"? Obviously the demand is not zero but all of the evidence points to it being a tiny fraction of the overall phone market. If the SE was actually wildly popular I doubt they would have stopped making small phones. Sony was the only company making smaller Android phones for years (last model introduced 2018) and their marketshare was plummeting pretty much the whole time. Then th…

You could make a similar analogy with the headphone jack. We know everyone wants those back but alas...

Re: How to Design Mobile Apps for One-Hand Usage

#76

One of the worst aspects of Spotify's near monopoly is that it comes bundled with their app, which is functional but not great. I'm particular, the number of times I need to reach to the top then bottom of the screen to accomplish simple things is too high.

Which version? Their entire menu is at the bottom

Android. The setting menu is upper right hand corner on the home screen, and the triple-dot menu is upper right hand corner while a song is playing.
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