Large Screens Small Hands

I like to use my phone single-handedly. That leaves me one free hand to carry or do something or just to keep balance while walking. Don't laugh - typing with two hands and walking could be daunting task. That goes well until I try to use that new ICS application back button in the upper left corner; it is located exactly opposite to my thumb. I need some juggling to reach it, risking to drop the phone. Screens become too big for our fingers.

I'm generally fine with the size; I spend more time texting, browsing and reading something on Currents or Pocket than calling. I'm just surprised with approaches from two main contenders to our too short fingers:

• Apple uses fixed screen size of 3.5", totally ignoring larger screens
• Google allows all screen sizes, totally ignoring the problem

Well, that's not completely true; I saw one clever idea on stock Android 4.0 browser. If you go to Settings -> Labs and turn on "Quick controls", you will experience something amazing: touching the screen with you thumb on the left or right border will activate semi-circular menu exactly where your finger is. No matter how big is the screen, menu is right at your fingertip. There is even second-level menu, again right in front of your finger. Sadly, this feature disappeared from new Chrome.

Apple for now avoided the problem, but with more and more users asking for bigger screen, this might change in the future. After all, Apple started this less-phone-more-computer trend, which requires more screen estate. Heck, who would bet that humongous Samsung Galaxy Note will become such a big success. 

I have an announcement to make: to help designing a better user interface, I developed very sophisticated tool, which analyses user's bio-metric data and suggests optimal UI layout. More about that next week, just in time for Samsung Galaxy S III.