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Comment by binarymax | Hacker News Reader

I remember when I bought an LG Chocolate when it first came on the scene about 5 years ago. It had capacitive touch buttons that were in such a bad place that if I was talking, and the button brushed against my ear it would hangup the call. It was awful and I vowed never again. Its the very reason I never got an iphone, opting for blackberry instead.

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> Its the very reason I never got an iphone, opting for blackberry instead.

That makes no sense. The iPhone does not have any capacitive button. It has 3 (or 4 depending on the way you count the volume rocker) physical buttons and a capacitive touch screen.

And no, it's not the same.

When the touch screen is used as a replacement for physical buttons - to answer or ignore a call, for example then using the screen is roughly equivalent to having a capacitive button for the same function.

Only very, very roughly. The issue is dedicated capacitive buttons. On-screen buttons can give visual feedback, and are only present when they are contextually appropriate. Capacitive buttons are dedicated spots on the hardware that are always present no matter what you are using your device for at the moment.

Yes, it's an important distinction. Still, there are valid reasons for preferring physical buttons that virtual buttons or other on-screen controls do not address.

I only know of two, do you have more?

1. Feedback. This turns out to not be important for most people for most tasks. Still physical feedback (of layout and of action) important tool of physical interaction and required for eyes-free operation. I fully expect this problem to be solved within two years.

2. Software bypass. This is mostly useful in case of complete software lockup (low level/OS crash), but while most phones are built to be "always on" you can't always avoid low-level lock-up. And in that case you need to reset all transient device state. I expect the final fail-safe to remain a physical button, although some kind of watchdog running alongside the OS itself may be able to take care of 99% of the lockups.

I was going to say tactile positioning, but you seem to be rolling that in to feedback/layout. I would also add the distinction between putting your finger on a control and actually activating it. Capacitive technology doesn't provide a good way to handle that[0]. For an extreme example of the type of control you'd like to make such a distinction, consider the trigger of a gun. It may be important to be very ready to activate the control, and even more important to not activate it prematurely.

[0] I don't consider press and hold, double-tap or similar to be good general-purpose solutions to this

Except the iPhone was damned clever in that regard. It has a proximity sensor next to the earpiece that would shut off the display. So, as soon as you go to answer a call, the phone detects your ear and shuts off the display so you don't accidentally do something stupid with your cheek.

Wait, I don't understand this argument. iPhones are one of the few phones that don't have this issue.

If I can activate a touch button with my finger than why not my ear?

EDIT: I didn't know about the proximity sensors and other mechanisms until the replies below informed me. I still prefer tactile though :)

The iPhone's proximity sensor disables the touch screen when it is near your head. Sounds dicey, but in practice has worked nigh flawlessly since launch.

The issue here is buttons that you physically press down (like the iPhone home button) vs buttons that are an extended part of the touch screen element (the back button on most Androids).

Because there is an IR proximity sensor which turns off the screen when your head is against the phone

Because the iphone uses accelerometers and other sensors to work out when the phone is even near your ear when on a call and disbles the screen, both saving battery and disabling input.

The iPhone has a proximity sensor to prevent this from happening.

This is an example of Apple's design brilliance. They have a feature that just works, and it's perfectly normal for users to have no idea why it just works or why other products that seem to have the same features are so frustrating to use.

Of course, the downside is that people sometimes buy a product that seems to be "as good as an iPhone," and they have no idea that their user experience is worse than the iPhone's, they just assume the iPhone works just as poorly as theirs.

I think this is a standard feature of most modern touchscreen smartphones and not some "design brilliance" relegated to only Apple devices.

I currently have to carry two phones, one is an Android device and the other is a Windows Phone 7 device, they both implement the proximity sensor and it works the same way as the iphone.

IIRC correctly HTC (back in the days of Windows Mobile 5) already employed this feature in their "slate" phones before the original iPhone was released. They then improved it by adding some rather unique features, like being able to flip the phone over (i.e. laying screen side up on a table) to silence/reject an incoming call.

I didn't use the HTC phone that you mention, but it would be interesting to know if the feature was implemented as well as it is in the iPhone. This feature has literally never failed for me in 2 years of using my iPhone (it sometimes gets false positives when the phone is in my hand, but it's not too bothersome).

http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+proximity+sensor+bug

Just to counter the "brilliance" part of your statement, there was an issue with the proximity sensor in iPhone 4 that took a couple of months to fix :)

I think this bug matches part of the issues people have with capacitive buttons - those buttons are prone to be active when they shouldn't causing mishits.

They totally have this issue. Wash your hands and get them 98% dry, try to use phone. Be frustrated.

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