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Comment by mrisoli | Hacker News Reader

Smartphone design is downright terrible in terms of functionality, they might look nice, but I've had so many phones that were very slippery and didn't offer a firm grip as if the manufacturer says you should buy a case. And Apple is the top offender, think antennagate, headphone jack...

That includes software, responsive design was created with the goal of adapting websites to smaller screens, as phones got bigger I don't see many sites utilizing responsive design so that I can still use my phone with one hand.

Also, I loved the MagSafe charging port on the MacBook, that is an example of great functionality on design, then Apple throws that out of the window and makes a single port laptop.

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The MagSafe cables, however, were terrible. I've burned through three so far (in almost as many years) from the cable sheathing failing near the connector. Other manufacturers have included strain relief at this critical junction in their cables for decades, but nooooo, that's too good for Apple. So instead I get this form-over-function cable that fails all too quickly and is expensive to replace to boot.

I much prefer USB-C, even if only because the cables themselves are better engineered.

Is the strain relief not good enough, or is it not present? Isn't that strain relief below the MagSafe connector shown here?

https://imgur.com/ZCt8R5g

Of course it’s a strain relief.

It really bugs me when people complain about Apple cables not having strain reliefs. They don’t have huge ugly strain reliefs, and maybe that means they aren’t good enough, but they definitely exist.

Why even have a strain relief if it's not good enough.

And a not good-enough strain relief is no relief at all.

Because this isn’t true. A moderate strain relief is far better than none.

The strain reliefs Apple uses work fine for a lot of people. I used to use an MBP with a MagSafe connector and never had any strain relief problems.

I'm really curious what you're doing with your cables. I'm on year 6 with my MBP adapter and that includes a year of traveling through Southeast Asia where I was constantly spooling and unspooling it, not to mention the number of times it got wet. It still works flawlessly. I also had a work MBP adapter for a number of years without any issue despite being spooled and unspooled each morning and evening.

Meanwhile, I've tripped over the wire countless times and been saved by the magsafe's ability to automatically disconnect rather than sending my 30-times-the-price laptop flying. It happens so often that USB-C charging is a non-starter for me. I'm buying older, refurb Macs until they realize their error. Short of that, I'm buying a bargain-basement PC that I can replace for under $1k because I know that kind of accident is going to happen eventually.

My experience could not be more different from you. My cable started fraying badly after 1-2 years and finally died after 3.5 years. I have only used it at home and a handful of trips where it been packed most of the time. I tripped on a laptop cable exactly zero times in my life. I accidentally brushed off the cable almost every single fucking day. I love this laptop but I hate this adapter. The brick is way to big and falls of of most outlets. The extensions cable helps but makes it way too long and akward to roll up.

My point isn't to say that your experience is less valid but the benefit of an open charging standard is that we each can pick power adapters that we fit our use case.

Edit: Also, my and his cable probably died because of using it on our laps.

Completely disagree with your disagreement. The brick definitely does not "fall out of most outlets."

I've had the same macbook air since 2011 that I have now donated to another family member. I also gave them the original charging cable with it. I have taken at least 20 flights with it. You just need to be more careful with your things.

MagSafe was _amazing_ because if someone snags the wire your laptop doesn't fall off the desk.

Did you notice the hypocrisy of your comment? I need to be more careful because my cable frayed but MagSafe is amazing because of all these people are so clumsy that they are tripping over the cable and launching laptops onto the floor.

If was using the same argument form as you I would say: Who are all this people that don't notice they are tripping on a cable? If you are not in an infomercial you will stop before launching a laptop onto a floor. I know a ton of people with windows computers and exactly zero of them have died from people tripping on the cable. MagSafe fixes a non-issue and is constantly annoyingly falling out.

I don't actually believe this but it is a silly and borderline rude way to argue. For some reason, you are in situations that benefit from MagSafe. This is a valid request, but I don't think is close to as common as you think. Since USB-C is open, you can get an adapter with a magnetic rip away section.

I am not excessively rough with my laptop. I used a badly frayed cable for 2 years without it breaking. I guarantee that you are not taking off and putting in your adapter multiple times per day and you are not using your laptop on your lap. Look at other peoples power adapters. The thin cable is not build to last and frays at both ends if you actually use the stupid wrapping things

Edit: I misspoke with regards to the size of the plug. Most of the outlets I used results in a delicate balance for the plug to stay in. Slight movements of the cable results in the plug falling out. Also, the folding plug makes it pain to plug into some hard to reach outlets.

It's possible they improved their production over the years without updating model numbers.'

Personally, I put a circle of electrical tape over each end to provide strain relief.

Nothing. I barely ever bring my laptop (and thus charging cables) anywhere. And yet I've had several failures.

He is pulling at the cable when unplugging, not the metal dongle. This friction plus sweat/dirt dissolves the cable.

My cables stay pristine over years of heavy travel, my co-workers are all in pieces - so I wanted to know why.

Apple cables are too thin and grossly overpriced.

Family probably went through at least half a dozen.

Never had a plain USB cable disintegrate on me IIRC.

I have an original 2011MBP MagSafe charger and a 2015MBP MagSafe 2 charger. The cable on the newer is stiffer has yellowed at the neck and feels gummier. It has been replaced by Apple twice.

My old MagSafe charger is still the original. The cable feels very flexible, and the only discoloration it has is from being dragged around and stepped on.

Whatever formulation Apple has changed in manufacturing the new MagSafe has shortened its lifespan.

I have the newer stiffer yellowing one that degrades and literally falls apart in pieces. I think they cheaped out on materials or something.

I similarly am using a charger right now that's maybe 8 years old and has no fraying. The first models were notoriously bad, but they got better over time.

So the MagSage concept is good, but Apple's implementation isn't.

I use a somewhat similar concept for some of my mobile devices (Magsafe-like adapter) to charge and transfer data. I'm not sure how frowned upon it is to link to a specific manufacturer here, but I assume a USB-C adapter could be attractive to someone on a new MacBook Pro that miss the MagSafe connector.

The design is function of the market. People wanted magic not function so they produced magic looking things (thin, shiny).

Now people have grown a bit, they'll ask for other values and the production will realign.

Waves and spirals

> Waves and spirals

Like "swings and roundabouts"? I've never come across this variation.

I never saw yours either (is it a common saying ? I'm not a native english speaker anyway, that would explain that).

Common in Britain and Ireland, at least - in context it just seemed like it might be a variation on the same idiom!

Mine just come from seeing predator/prey graphs https://duckduckgo.com/?q=predator+prey+graph&t=ffsb&iax=ima...

and a really weird feeling that, indeed things do roundabouts, but it's not a perfect back-to-start revolution, the soil was raised but the people on it not so much (but they do feel they progressed). A circle that doesn't close properly is a bit a spiral.

</math-envy>

I really like your expression, although maybe not everybody would appreciate the distinction.

Or, put it on a case and have it not break when it falls to the ground

And then those people go and throw theor brand new phones right into giant sturdy cases. Maybe it's time to ignore the voices that pretend people want shiny when really that's what the bloggers want to crow about.

I don't think it's true. Some manufacturers did produce less thin phones, both for better resistance and longer battery life. Nobody bought them. Maybe you're right and it's the web that influences people into buying these or maybe people just want to buy the latest and "most bestest" (whatever the metric is, nowadays its thin and pixel density ... people are into 4K now, 8K is coming too)

> Nobody bought them.

Because those phones lacked many other features that people ALSO wanted.

Fair point maybe they were cut from other features. I'm only quoting a few thin articles about the massive sales of thin but fragile devices.

I'd love to see different proportions and design decisions, I'm sure there are sweet spots

Indeed. This was the same fallacy that killed keyboard slider phones. Sure, their sales were poor... but the reason why is because they generally came out 8 months later than the non-keyboard version without improved hardware. So by the time each keyboard phone generation came out, there was already newer hardware with newer features on the market.

The thing is, everyone wants to protect their $600 “investment”. So if you make the phone bigger so that it’s more rugged, people will still put it in a case to protect the housing. So now the rugged phone is just massive and no one wants to carry it.

Now, if the rugged bits of the phone were easily and cheaply swapped, that would probably make it more appealing. But I can buy a new case for my phone for $10, so it’s hard for the rugged version to compete effectively.

If you want decent software support, you have to go with whatever the manufacturers consider fashionable.

I remember when the Motorola Droid took this strategy... at the time, Android (and in particular Motorola's Android skin) was quite a bit behind iOS UX-wise. Although I guess you could ask why it didn't dominate among Android users.

They're not equivalent. A case can often fit many phones, so they're cheaper to repair and offer more design variety. In the early 2000s, you could find cases for the 3310 everywhere, but I found very little choice for my 3410.

Yeah, it's not like advertising has any effect on consumer desire.

Or, more optimistically, sometimes people dont know that they wanted something until it was given to them.

Plato's cave comes to my mind... Also, whomever I talk to, from the most techy to least (and I'm a humanities student so nearly all my usual contacts are non-techies), I hear they want sturdier phones. Most people use protective side products like cases and films, even though the latter reduces the touch sensitivity. About half of the phones I see people use have cracks here and there. The industry thinks that people prefer thinner and cuter over sturdier and functional because most people just try to make the best use of what's available and don't bother providing feedback, public or otherwise; and those who are vocal about these new innovations are the tech-geeks and the like. (edited to add:) The market researchers probably confound the people trying to extract value from what's available on the market with their actual preferences. People can't buy what's not available, so, certainly, if all you see is sales data, you will never know that there's a public that wants a decently sized, sturdy, yet nice looking phone with decent hardware, that does not break when somebody farts close by and runs their favourite apps.

> Plato's cave comes to my mind

Do you mind elaborating on this? I'm familiar with Plato's cave and I don't see the relevance.

I'm not gkya (the parent poster) but I believe what he means is that the prisoners in the cave only understand reality as presented to them through the shadows. Likewise, we as consumers have only been offered minimalist, breaky phones with modern hardware/software, so we have grown to live inside that awful reality, and not realize the true scope of what is possible/better.

Thanks, this is half if what I meant; the other half being the inverse: the producers and the marketers have present a very remote, inorganic knowledge of their customers' preferences, only a shadow of their ideas. If they were set free from their echo chambers and cubicles, they'd see that the numbers they based their decisions are not really representative of preferences, but of choices that their clientele had to do.

It's fashion and about styling, not usage and design. Most schools where you learn design are actually about styling.

Since the word has changed meaning, we need a new one. Usability has a different meaning again.

I liked the MagSafe, too, but I like the USB Type-C ports better. Only one cable for a docking station (instead of two), and it (in theory) works for non-Apple docks/chargers (and non-Mac laptops in turn can use Apple docks/chargers).

USB 3.1 over a MagSafe-like reversible connector would be ideal.

Smartphone design is downright terrible in terms of functionality

I disagree. It seems obvioous to me that smartphones are optimized for easy insertion into and retrieval from tight front pockets in pants. That’s why they are shaped the way they are. It’s also partly why the headphone jack had to go. Wired headphones are a pain in the ass when you have to route the wires through layers of clothes and into a pocket or a handbag.

> as phones got bigger I don't see many sites utilizing responsive design so that I can still use my phone with one hand.

Is 6.5" or 7" a phone such as the Galaxy Note, to be used with one hand?

Or is it a Nexus 7, to be used with two hands?

If you buy a tablet or phablet — a device larger than 5" — you'll have to expext that you'll have to use it with two hands.

You can always buy a smaller device if you prefer to use something else.

How about phones below 6"? The Nexus 6P or 5X for instance, a common use case I see is people trying to do quick things on their phone with one hand using the thumb for interacting with the screen, which if you have a phone in the 5-6" ballpark it is not easy to reach the top edges.

This is where solid design comes into play, Tinder's ease of motion and placement of control buttons makes it easy to use with a single hand which means increased usage, thus creating a habit-forming loop, this is critical to Tinder's success.

The best software can’t fix broken hardware.

Any phone above 4.5, maybe 5" device diagonal (not screen diagonal) is basically unusable single-handed.

And this means that on such devices, people interact entirely different with UI. Which results in different UI paradigms.

I’d have to either compromise my UI for users of smaller devices, or for users of larger devices. But in either case, users of larger devices will never get a truly awesome UI, as that’s simply not possible. (Either you waste space, or parts of the UI are just not reachable).

Making part of the UI display-only is not wasting space.

The problem with these phones is the insistence to push UI elements to the corners on touch screens even though original the UX motivation for putting important things in corners was that they're the easiest mouse targets.

It’s not that simple.

The usable space on a screen doesn’t grow much between a 4" and a 6" phone, because you hold your thumb further over the screen, and more parts are unreachable.

And while one could move the content into the top-left or top-right (depending on handedness of the user), the result is so ugly users preferred a UI with less real estate over it in tests.

With a 4" phone, the best reachable areas are the top and the left. Which is why Android 4.0 – which was right around the time when 4-5" phones became popular – moved all these actions into the top and left edges with the Action Bar and Navigation Drawer.

With a 6" phone, those areas are unreachable, the bottom and the right are obscured by your hand, and the only area left for controls is the center – but you can’t really break up content around the controls either.

The only solution that works partially are gestures, but those are very limited in what you can do, and are very inaccurate.

If you have a better solution for a chat client in which a user might have 400+ channels open than using a navigation drawer (with search) on the left, content in the middle, and input at the bottom, then please present some.

But currently, only for a small handful of apps the 6" problem is solved, and I believe that for many apps, it might never be solved.

> best reachable areas are the top and the left.

Which makes it pretty much impossible to use _in_ your right hand while manipulating UI elements with your thumb.

On a 4" phone, it’s perfectly possible.

I have relatively small hands, but here’s a few photos: https://imgur.com/a/YIRAj – 100% of the screen is reachable, and on all below 4.9" also with a firm grip.

In contrast, on the 5.2" Nexus 5X, only with a loose grip is the left or upper part reachable, and the action bar’s up button is generally unreachable while holding the phone in a firm grip.

On larger devices, such as the Nexus 6P (currently none here, so I can’t take photos), it gets far worse.

Phone UI is designed for 4-5" devices, if you use larger, you have to live with that, but that’s your decision.

Yes. Phones that are switched off are easily reachable almost anywhere.

They also happen to have no active UI elements on the screen. Or visual feedback.If you'd switch it on, on that photo you you'd be long-pressing the (bottom-right) "back" key, and possibly generating word salad in any focused text input field.

Almost nobody has issues holding a phone with the active display switched off.

I can also hold them for you while switched on without issue. I photographed them switched off because it was faster to do it this way, as otherwise I’d first have to power them on and set them up.

But notice the Moto G (2014) in the album, which is on, and doesn’t show interference.

Or,look at this helpful graphic Scott Hurf made http://scotthurff.com/images/posts/thumb-zone-2/thumb-zones-...

Your hands are not that small. My hands are not that small, and they're smaller than yours.

I'm a woman with about average or small hands compared to my friends and colleagues, so compared to the average man hand, they should be quite small.

I'm a man whose hands are about 1/8" shorter than the average, and with your 5" phone, you're able to hit more with your tight grip than I can hit with my loose grip. With my loose grip, I can only comfortably hit about 1/4 of the screen. Maybe it has to do with the relative size of the palm to the fingers. It's actually one of the reasons that I'm a fan of big bezels on the top and bottom - it gives me something to grip if I need to use the top or bottom of the screen.

what are you talking about? I have a Samsung S4, which the sort of "4-5 inch" (translation: 10-13 cm) phone you're talking about, yes?

If I'm holding it in my right hand, about the only part I can't reach with my thumb is the top-left and the very top. Which is about the opposite of what you describe. I'm really confused about just about any statements you made following that, can you explain?

Also, how do you imagine the hand obscuring any parts of the screen without firing touch events all over the place? Placing your hand on the screen will make any app go haywire (yea and we should fix that, challenging but not impossible).

BTW I'm not talking about text-input, just about accessing larger elements of a touch UI. I have kind of shaky hands, I've tried a lot of different ways to hold it and I think that I just can't do the two-thumb typing cause I'm unable to hold it steady in that position, or at least not in a way that's healthy to keep your hands in for frequent stretches.

Also, what is your background in UX? I don't mean a formal education, but any introductory background reading? I often wonder this in discussions like these. Similar to -say- typography, it's not a really hard topic to grasp the basics of. But just reading some intro stuff about it will provide you with: terminology, fundamental concepts, and a few rules of thumb (hahaha did you get that I'm hilarious). Things that you won't be able to intuit or figure out by just being smart-thinking and opinionated.

I'm asking because not only do you not point out any potential solutions, you even assume these might never be solved by anyone else either, for no good reason (and yet write a rather long and authorative-sounding post about it).

> Also, what is your background in UX?

I’m studying compsci, took several classes on the topic, and have previously also participated in courses outside of university where we did UX work more practically.

> what are you talking about? I have a Samsung S4, which the sort of "4-5 inch" (translation: 10-13 cm) phone you're talking about, yes?

Scott Hurf made this helpful graphic: http://scotthurff.com/images/posts/thumb-zone-2/thumb-zones-...

> I'm asking because not only do you not point out any potential solutions, you even assume these might never be solved by anyone else either, for no good reason

I’m saying it’s very problematic to solve this, because the real estate that is reachable and therefore usable for controls on modern devices has significantly shifted to an area where it’s hard to place controls.

The unreachable zone at the top is the reason why Google has started moving all their controls to the bottom of the screen, with bottom navigation and bottom search bar – except, now you get into the bottom-right problematic zone.

Of course you can solve it – but, as I mentioned above, with current UI paradigms you’d need to waste more space. And by the time we might have solved our current UX problem, our phones will have changed already again, so the solution is irrelevant. Just like today’s top bar and left navigation started to become popular right before today’s oversized phones got popular.

> You can always buy a smaller device if you prefer to use something else.

I'd love to. One-handed phones have gotten thin on the ground.

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