Anyone else hate the no-touch buttons?

[JudgeHolden]

Any time I have the phone one-handed my palm inevitably hits the Search button. ****, it seems to happen at least once or twice a day anyway, if I'm shifting in any way, shape or form (as in if I'm standing on a line in the airport with luggage and killing time gaming, inevitably I'm going to get sucked from the game to Bing because the phone things I tapped Search.)


Real buttons, manufacturers. Yes, they don't look as pretty. Yes, there's always a chance of mechanical failure. But from a functional standpoint they're much better.




But I guess Apple's design choices repeatedly emphasize that people care far more about form than function. We only have ourselves to blame...

 

[thed]

This happened to me a lot when I first got the phone, but it hasn't happened to me for a while now. When I'm holding it in just my right hand I've learned to hold the phone further out toward my fingertips, so that the left edge of the phone is almost on the ends of my fingers and the phone rests almost entirely on the fingers and not the palm. This lets me easily tap any part of the screen without the base of my thumb hitting the search button.

Obviously ymmv depending on the shape of your hand but this works for me.

That said, the capacitive buttons are annoying and I suspect they're used to save money. I've noticed that whenever I hand my trophy to someone who's never used it before they almost immediately hit the search button by accident. Hopefully manufacturers get away from this trend in future hardware.

Sent from my HTC Trophy using Board Express

 

[Vallos]

That has been my experience as well, Thed. It's just a matter of getting use to the phone.

 

[TheArcaneFlame]

I rarely have issues with unintentionally hitting the buttons... It occurs most frequently when playing games and only occasionally during general phone. My hands aren't all that large though so I'm sure that helps.

I think it would help if they made a setting where you had to press the button for x number of seconds for it to register as being pressed. That might be an acceptable compromise. That way those who don't have any issue with it could leave it as is and others who frequently hit it by accident could set a 1 or 2 second time needed to trigger the key press. Given, I'm not a programmer but I wouldn't think that would be too hard to accomplish.

 

[jimski]

With Mango, you will need to lift your finger from the main screen in order to activate a capactive button. So less mishaps while playing games.
I sort of like the clean look of the virtual buttons. Mechanical, clicky buttons are so yesterday.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

 

[thed]

With Mango, you will need to lift your finger from the main screen in order to activate a capactive button. So less mishaps while playing games.
I sort of like the clean look of the virtual buttons. Mechanical, clicky buttons are so yesterday.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

They certainly look nice, there's no denying that. I'm just saying that when I'm trying to convert someone to wp7 I give them my phone to try it out. When they're trying to do something and bing suddenly pops up and they don't know wtf is going on it doesn't look good.

Fair or not, people associate the hardware with the os and if the hardware confuses/annoys them it turns them off.

Sent from my HTC Trophy using Board Express

 

[starblade876]

I definitely prefer hardware buttons to the capacitive buttons. I, too, have been Bing'd a few times while playing games.

I disagree that hardware buttons are outdated and ugly though. I liked the LG developer device's buttons and I'm pretty sure they were physical. I also like the physical home button on the Samsung Omnia 7. I don't know if they're physical, but the ASUS developer device also looked good to me and I'd like it more if they were physical.

 

[Umm Yeah]

I'm coming from old school BlackBerrys and I was very nervous about transitioning away from a physical keyboard to a virtual one but I must say I've gotten comfortable with it very quickly - as in, I picked up my phone last Friday and I'm telling you this four days later. I've found I've got to trust that the phone will figure out what I intended to type in spite of what my fat fingers may have actually typed in and 99 times out of a hundred it does so successfully. I practice the "type first, review second" school of virtual keyboarding. Just give it a chance to work as it was designed to do.

 

[thed]

This thread is about the back, home and search buttons on the bottom. I have no complaints about the keyboard; I love it and I think most people are the same way. Its those 3 capacitive buttons that are the problem.

Sent from my HTC Trophy using Board Express

 

[Ruined]

I think the capacitive buttons would be better if there was a larger dead zone between the bottom of the screen and the buttons to avoid accidental hitting of them when pressing something near bottom of screen. It looks like the Mango chassis implements this from the pics I've seen.

 

[donovan1983]

Had typed and submitted a reply but Board Express decided to bug out. Anyway...

I had a T-Mobile G2 for a few months and its capacitive buttons were even closer to the bottom of the screen than on the Trophy. I did eventually get used to it for the most part. It doesn't help that HTC seems to make those capacitive buttons especially sensitive. Still, I much prefer capacitive buttons over physical ones.

Sent from my mwp6985 using Board Express