The iPhone has no Buttons!

When I heard there were no physical buttons, the first thing I thought about is a friend who is legally blind, so I asked him for his comments. He asked why this device is based on touch, and not voice? He also commented on how Apple has not been known for contributions to accessibility.

Are there really people who can dial their cell phone without looking at it? I find that hard to believe.

The things that are important to remember here are: a) if you don’t like soft buttons, there are plenty of phones out there for you to buy. b) none of us have used to the iPhone, and cannot judge the ease of typing on its interface without doing so. I reserve judgement on the typing because, frankly, Apple knows a thing or two about interfaces. And whose to say you can’t type on it with two thumbs? Has anyone tried? This is why Apple has traditionally stayed away from advanced announcements in the past, because their stuff gets rung through the ringer in the press/blogoshpere without anyone actually touching it. And not enough fingers have graced the iPhone to pass judgement at this point. So hold the firing squad.

The problem to solve here is not “dialing,” but rather “input” and “select.”

I assume that at least part of the problems associated with input will be handled in the way that they are handled with an iPod - you will dock the device and use an app like iTunes to do batch-management of content.

As for selection requiring visual attention and, for longer strings of text or numbers, input requriing some tactile feedback - I will wait to see how the iPhone tries to deal with this.

Apple is good at not designing for current *implementation constraints* and instead designing for the basic interaction required for usefulness and usability. When they nixed disk drives, everybody freaked at first too.

We can’t say that it’s not useful at all, until we have it in our hands, touched it, used it for sometime and noticed if it good or bad.

2 James Melzer
Yes there are. A lot. And they even type text messages without looking at the screen and without T9.
Also lots of people have fast keys, to dial nubers pressing just one key…

James Melzer-

Also, even though we may glance at the keyboard, it’s often used in concert with muscle memory and tactile feedback. Can we expect muscle memory to work with the iPhone? I’m not sure- it seems the UI will be changing around quite a bit based on the context or mode- it will be interesting to see if the buttons maintain some consistency

So, although we’re looking at the phone to dial, we know roughly where everything is. I’d say things like the Dail and End buttons, the D-Pad and any “escape” or softkeys are all things we reach for instinctively and without really paying attention to.

With the iPhone- if the escape/back/cancel key is moving around the interface *and* you’re just touching glass when you find it, it may add a layer of “mental processing” to the whole process that requires you to think and consciously escape as opposed to the instinctive gesture done with current phones.

Speaking of gestures though- I could see a finger gesture being used for these crictical actions that would always be there for you regardless of the mode/context of the phone. Similar to Mouse Gestures in browsers, you can always close the tab/page regardless of what the mouse is hovering over. This could be a solution to the issues I’m describing- They have a gesture that will unlock the phone, so a similar type of gesture could always be “escape” (I do realize they have the “home” button as well)

If it works as well as my macbook pro’s trackpad, I’d love it. Sure, I need the keyboard to type this comment, but other than writing, all my input is trackpad-based. If it the “end” button doesn’t turn the thing on, even better. If the price plummets and it is freed from a single carrier, I might even get one.

I think the accessibility issue is less to do with the phone capability unless we are assuming that all phones will one day have this approach (without accessible alternatives being created somewhere on that path) - but would certainly be interested to hear Apple’s 2c worth.

I don’t think dialling will be such a problem, since instead of 8-10 digits users could select either pre-stored numbers or numbers from a search engine, yellow pages etc. Texting, on the other hand, will be tough!

And most importantly … I often have dirty hands and carry my phone next to my house keys. So this picture scared me.

@James Melzer: I have seen people enter entire emails by touch, while carrying on a conversation, with me, in front of them.

Why do you find it hard to believe that people can learn how to touch-type on mobile “phone” keypads?

The keypad on my Singapore-market Nokia has 26 western characters clumsily strewn about on 9 keys. Compare that to *five* keys (1,2,3,4 and 5) bearing a kanji stroke each. With 5 keys, a chinese speaker (there are more of them than you and I, and a gretaer percentage of them use mobile devices to communicate as well) can crank out an enormus combination of words, and can do so very quickly once they have memorised their physical location… via haptic memory.

And you can do this without holding the thing up to your nose and clumsily pokng a finger at it.

That said, I agree with sentiment that until we have seen and played with the device, we won’t know.

And again, I am way more intersted in finding out how quickly the iPhone’s carrier lock can be broken (and SIM chip swapped out) and if we can start writing software for it as well.

Bang-Olufsen’s Serene is an interesting contrast to Apple’s iPhone. I tend to be in the camp of wanting my phones to be tactile rather than something you look at…I want something that I touch.

My biggest concern is whether the iPhone can be operated with one hand or not.

I have the Motorola SLVR, which has buttons similar to the RAZR. I have a hard time typing on this keypad _while_ looking, nevermind without looking. I’ve always wondered about those tiny keypads on most current phones. I’ve done a bit of texting on the various phones I’ve had and I wouldn’t dare call any one of them comfortable. Am I just a giant in a land of tiny hands? I stear well clear of those little “keyboards” that do nothing but increase the size of my devices.

I have seen people text whole messages without looking. I am too old, but it’s a basic skill that every European teenager has.

If I would venture a guess, though, this category of users will the the least troubled by a new technology like the multi-touch touchscreen on the iPhone.

I have been thinking about how I personally use my phone - most of the time I lock/unlock the keyboard, then make a call via the “recent calls” button to call someone I have called before.

The other use is to call someone in the phone memory. Only on a rare occasion do I enter a new number, so the benefit of being able to type numbers blind is really minuscule.

The reason there are so few devices with a touch screen interface out there is that it doesn’t really work except with a stylus, and even then it’s awkward. Apple knows this very well so it will be interesting to see how they solved all the problems involved - smearing, accidental input, scratching, too much or too little sensitivity etc. It’s very hard to get right. But then again, if anybody can make it work well, it’s Apple.

The first issue raised in my mind was as soon as you introduce a “touch screen” you are forcing one hand to touch, meaning you other hand must hold. Buttons (physical) are far more suitable for one hand operation and much easier than a buttonless UI.

quick follow up…the reason i say one hand operation is more suitable to buttoned interfaces is that in handheld devices we’re far more likely to use our thumb as the finger of choice to interact with the device; whereas touchscreen devices elicit an index finger response the majority of times. Naturally when we use our index finger we are not using other fingers to hold the device at the same time. I think apple has made a mistake for not including (at the minimum a sliding kb) a raised haptically intelliget ’screen’ with buttons that can ‘raise’ themselves when the keypad is needed. perhaps that would increase the price too much?

“Are there really people who can dial their cell phone without looking at it? I find that hard to believe.”

yes i can flip my phone go to my inbox (to reply to a message), type a message & send it to someone all without looking, its a good way to sneak in messages when at work or at school, its not all that hard, just some getting used to & some practice & i dont even use T9, i hate it coz i type slower with it!

“Are there really people who can dial their cell phone without looking at it? I find that hard to believe.”

Of course. I send whole text messages (including selecting who to send it to) and call people without ever looking at the phone. If i don’t need to look at the keyboard of my computer to type this message, I don’t want to have to look at keyboard on my phone either.