Hacker News Reader

Re double-tap to zoom, nobody mentioned that I'd lose features when I upgraded, I honestly was starting to think I'd imagined that feature. It certainly doesn't behave like I remember it doing.

I'm having the opposite reaction as well, likely for similar reasons as the author: I use an iPhone 3GS running iOS5 and am comparing with a newer Android phone. Nearly every gripe he mentions having about Android, I have with my iPhone. Don't even get me started on web browsing, maybe iOS5 is just using a ridiculous amount of memory or something because I never had this problem before upgrading, but now visiting certain webpages (eg Canada Post) crashes Safari. Nevermind smooth scrolling.

I'm not about to write some link-bait blog post about it though, the reasons why are obvious, I'm using an older phone with a newer OS, and am comparing to a recent Android phone. Doesn't mean I'm happy that iOS5 is reducing the usability of my phone, but at least I can apply critical thinking to the situation at hand.

Double-tap for zoom is there all the time but maybe the sites you visit don't zoom correctly because the container goes all the way from left to right (I think this site has such a zooming problem).

And the iCloud web apps are awesome. Don't know where the problem is. They behave like real OS apps. I like that.

Really? Performance is awful for me.

Double-tap to zoom has been there since day one.

Reading a notification, and having no direct path back to where you came from (answering a txt message, for instance) feels really clunky.

This is actually fully addressed in iOS 5 with the notification center. You can swipe down the notification center over any app, then swipe it back up out of the way right back to where you were.

No, it's not. I can see the notification just fine, but if I click on it to answer, I have no one-click way to get back to the app I was in before responding to the notification.

Two clicks and a tap. Double click the home button, tap the app you want.

You said reading a notification. That's addressed with the notification center which doesn't even take you out of the app. If you do switch apps quick switching back to apps has been there since iOS 4 with the double tap of home. How much easier do you need it?

One click, like Android does.

> EDIT: Ok click to zoom is kinda there, but I like the way it works on Android better. That's just a preference, so I'll strike that from my list of objections.

What's the difference?

I haven't studied it too carefully so I'm working off impressions here, but I don't think Android zoomed-to-content the way iOS does. For instance, when loading Hacker News, the initial view would be very zoomed out, so I could just barely read headlines. If I double-tapped, it would zoom in enough for me to read normally. Another double-tap brought me back out to the page overview. It also, as I recall, would not retain zoom levels if I entered a new URL manually. This seems more usable to me than retaining zoom level, and only zooming to show content.

iOS definitely doesn't retain zoom levels between pages and never has.

On zooming in to content (actually it zooms in on page blocks) I disagree, but I'll leave it at personal preference. Android zooms in at a fixed zoom level and reflows the text, IIRC.

(don't test any mobile web browser on this very website as the HTML is awful and makes its job much harder)

Sounds like you are not actually and iOS user.

This is my first iOS device, but I can assure you I'm using it!