Hmmm. Part of me wants to say "yes", but that's purely for aesthetic reasons. There have been so many times in recent days when I've looked for a good wallpaper image, only to find there's no way to get a good portrait crop out of it.
Perhaps that's why Bing chooses the images they choose. There is always a good portrait crop out of the Bing images on the Bing Homepage Gallery. I always get a good portrait for my phone, and a landscape for my laptop.
I've got to say "no", though. Aside from watching video, everything else I do with the phone is based around portrait. Landscape web browsing is not pleasant on a mobile.
Landscape web browsing is what I do most of the time. Easier to type and easier to read due to larger view area and not having to pan left and right to read full lines of text.
Yeah, I'm with Praxius on this one. The text is already so small on a phone, that rotating it to landscape gives bigger print to tread for me.
Landscape is pretty much the only way I do browsing on a mobile. Nothing "not pleasant" about it for me. That's okay, everyone has their own way of doing things. One man's junk is another man's treasure and all that.
Indeed. Because what my mum wants when she picks up a new phone is 76 pages of Settings to review, with four subpages of each.
There's a usability line that has to be drawn somewhere. Preferably not just off the bottom of the screen because someone decided landscape was a good idea.
Get over yourself. Just because you don't want it, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of others who do. I have a landscape kickstand on my phone, as many people do, because a lot of cases are sold that have a landscape kickstand on it. I don't use Xbox Music because it doesn't do landscape, so I've found a landscape alternative so that I can use it as a music player on my night stand. I also have a night stand clock program to make it like an old time LED clock. When I'm working at my desk, my phone usually sits in landscape mode on the kickstand on my desk.
I'm irritated that I can't do calls or start screen in landscape, while all the settings work in landscape as does text messages. It's like Microsoft got halfway through making an OS that can go either way and just stopped and said, "That's good enough." I say they should finish the job they started.
Its actually a smaller viewing area, but yes, is more similar to browsing on a pc etc
However, a landscape Start screen comes with different interaction issues
Apparently you can only see vertically. Much larger viewing area horizontally, and I read left to right. Works better for me.
...and with the death of the qwerty slider form factor there's simply no reason to have the home screen rotate.
More options are always good but lets be sensible about this, realistically how many people would ACTUALLY use the start screen in landscape mode anyway.
Well, people are voting for it in the uservoice. I've added my vote, and I would SO use it in landscape mode more than portrait mode. In addition to my phone sitting in landscape on my bedside table and on my desk while I work, it also sits in landscape mode on my dashboard in my car. Landscape mode is sorely needed. I'm tired of hurting my neck trying to read it.
Yeah, thanks for providing the link. Had already done that a little while back, but am glad to have it advertised for more people to add votes to.
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