With phones, it's always been easier to reach the bottom. This is why tab bars have always been at the bottom. This is why soft keyboards have always been at the bottom. This is why Apple moved Safari's controls to the bottom by default.
The idea back then was maybe to separate the confirm action from other actions located at the bottom bar.
Human Interface Guidelines changed a lot as Apple changed the iPhone form factor. But with a 3.5", most of the screen is "uniformly" reachable and the bottom is slight less reachable as you usually need to flex the thumb.
Maybe I’m an outlier, but it’s been over a year and I still don’t like how in accessible the top and bottom of the screen on my 13 mini are for one handed use. I swipe to text one handed, but pressing the numbers its emoji button requires serious contortion and dexterity. Maybe the fact that I tend to use my left hand (despite being a righty) contributes to this.
Anyone else agree?
If you use your phone one-handed often enough, iOS Reachability works pretty well: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iph145eba8e9/io...
Do you hold your phone from the top, with the bottom ending unsupported and hanging out? And if so, why?
Obvious downsides: if you loosen your grip then the phone will fall to the ground; you can’t reach the on screen keyboard.
The _original_ iPhone is tiny by today's standards. It's 15% shorter than a current iPhone SE, with a relatively huge chin. At that point the top corner is where the thumb is when it's straight up.
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-SE-2022,...
Read the second section, labeled "Thumbs vs Touchscreens", which shows the sweet spot for accessing content via left or right thumb or both. The lower corner closest to the base of the thumb is hard to reach. Unless the user was using both thumbs, placing target UI in one of those corners would hurt one-handed users.
Also note which areas are labeled as HARD to reach for either/both thumbs - the location where GTK4 has placed the main buttons in the File Chooser dialog.