A critique of smart phone interfaces and technology.

[MoreCoffee]

Why do you need to "swipe right" to answer a phone call? Why not just have a green answer button and a red decline button?

why do you need to swipe down to turn off? Why not just turn off after the power button is pressed for a while?

Why not offer "sight impaired" and "dexterity impaired" assistive options on the standard user interface. Surely smart phone makers know that the world has a lot of children and old people in it. And a lot of people who need glasses.
Why do smart phone makers keep aiming for thinner, lighter, less durable phones when it must be obvious to everybody that phones do get dropped, do get damp or rained upon and so forth. Are the phone makers so cynical that they deliberately leave these faults intact in the hope that buyers will break their phones and buy a new one?

It must be bad business. Why isn't the market place and competition addressing these very obvious faults?

 

[Lamb]

My phone has a button to turn off...I don't swipe. I have a Samsung S3 and my complaint is a short battery life. One morning I woke up at 6AM and by 11AM my battery was already down to 15% and I used it once to text someone and that's it.

 

[MoreCoffee]

My phone has a button to turn off...I don't swipe. I have a Samsung S3 and my complaint is a short battery life. One morning I woke up at 6AM and by 11AM my battery was already down to 15% and I used it once to text someone and that's it.

have you replaced the battery recently?

 

[Lamb]

have you replaced the battery recently?

Every year I get a new battery. I even restart my phone when it acts up like that and it helps for a few more days to stop draining so quickly.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Every year I get a new battery. I even restart my phone when it acts up like that and it helps for a few more days to stop draining so quickly.

You could save your contacts and other personal data - like photographs - and then do a "factory reset" to clear away any nasty battery draining apps and viruses.

 

[MoreCoffee]

As a test I installed Necta launcher on my old phone, the one I have as a backup in case my current phone dies. Necta Launcher is a little bland but it looks like something that I can pass on to elderly people with some confidence that they can learn to use it without needing to be like "the cool kinds" who have thumbs that swipe and slide and dart and tap around the screen at a pace that no 80+ year old could hope to emulate or even to visually follow.

 

[Lamb]

You could save your contacts and other personal data - like photographs - and then do a "factory reset" to clear away any nasty battery draining apps and viruses.

I don't have many apps on my phone because I am almost always home so I use my computer. I shouldn't have any viruses because of the same reason My phone is for texting my daughter mainly. I use the least amount of data in the family... point 2 percent LOL

 

[MoreCoffee]

I don't have many apps on my phone because I am almost always home so I use my computer. I shouldn't have any viruses because of the same reason My phone is for texting my daughter mainly. I use the least amount of data in the family... point 2 percent LOL

You could buy a new Android phone, some of them have large batteries.

 

[Andrew]

I baby my phone now, I don't understand why people constantly have cracked screens it really bothers me. I won't put my keys and phone in the same pocket, I also like my aux to work so I don't leave it out to get dirty. I rarely turn it off completely, but yeah the swipe to answer is annoying because it always takes a few times to do it.

 

[Lamb]

You could buy a new Android phone, some of them have large batteries.

It's hard to convince my husband that I need a new phone since this one does still work. He just has me carry a charger around LOL

 

[MoreCoffee]

It's hard to convince my husband that I need a new phone since this one does still work. He just has me carry a charger around LOL

Surely you could buy one for yourself.

 

[Lamb]

Surely you could buy one for yourself.

Well I don't earn money anymore so all purchases are a joint agreement on whether they're needed or not.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Well I don't earn money anymore so all purchases are a joint agreement on whether they're needed or not.

Save your pennies from getting the deposit back on bottles and selling lemonade and soon you'll be able to buy a phone of your own!

 

[Lamb]

Save your pennies from getting the deposit back on bottles and selling lemonade and soon you'll be able to buy a phone of your own!

I'll have to be in competition with the little girls across the street for that lemonade stand! They only charge a quarter a cup!

 

[MoreCoffee]

I'll have to be in competition with the little girls across the street for that lemonade stand! They only charge a quarter a cup!

You could sell spiked lemonade just be sure to specify that it is spiked with a fully legal substance and that drivers ought to be careful about how much of it they drink.

:smirk:

 

[Lamb]

You could sell spiked lemonade just be sure to specify that it is spiked with a fully legal substance and that drivers ought to be careful about how much of it they drink.

:smirk:

I think you're onto something there!! :spinningsmilie:

 

[MoreCoffee]

Well as much fun as discussing lemonade is and how nice a little dash of vodka in the lemonade can be we ought to return to the topic. The interface on Android phones is too unfamiliar for my 83+ year old friends who are using smart phones for the first time and it makes me wonder if the people who design smartphone interfaces have given even a moment's thought to how their granny and great granddad would cope with all the sliding and swiping and tiny little visual clues about functions would be received by elderly people. A simple set of obvious buttons either with text labels in them or with pictograms that are genuinely obvious on them would be far better then a set of > > > signs flashing to indicate that to answer a phone call one needs to swipe right.