47 votes
Accepted

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

While space is an obvious part of the equation, it's not the main one, you could simply have a sliding physical keyboard just as previous generations of smartphones and be a happy camper. However, ...
Devin's user avatar
  • 37.3k
35 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

What caused this decline in the use of physical keyboards? The iPhone What is the impact on the UX of mobile devices? This is a pretty deep question and is tough to answer objectively. I would ...
tbolt's user avatar
  • 679
23 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

The main reason is versatility. A keyboard in software can be easily adapted to different layouts, different character/symbol sets and different cultures. In addition, custom keyboards such as Swype ...
Stonetip's user avatar
  • 737
22 votes

Multiple notifications for the same thing

Good, practical question. In my experience with working on a booking platform recently, we touched/worked on this. More thoughts: Why this is probably done: To ensure that the notification reaches ...
Amit Jain's user avatar
  • 3,899
6 votes

What is the best mobile number authorization strategy?

Both are equally good in terms of security. According to me the first senerio is good enough and adapted one. We are used to first senerio. The second senerio doesn't making much changes and ...
Abhishek Sharma's user avatar
5 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

Most probably because of 2 trends in the smartphone industry. Phones get thinner and thinner, and losing a physical keyboard makes a phone a lot less thick. Screens on phones kept getting bigger, and ...
MJB's user avatar
  • 2,204
5 votes
Accepted

Do users care about notification settings?

It depends on how many notifications you are sending, how frequently they are sent, and how relevant they are to the user at the time. If you are only sending one or two notifications a day (...
James Coyle's user avatar
  • 1,557
5 votes

Selecting between two options in smartphone app?

The above two screens are an example of 'Navigation' and they are not used for 'Selection' in general. Since you have mentioned it's an app that lets you choose food items, What If the user wants to ...
Sooraj MV's user avatar
  • 3,599
4 votes

Why do manufacturers allow Android's 'takeover'?

To keep costs down I would rephrase the question as 'Why do manufacturers sell devices with seemingly insufficient memory?'. The answer is to make the device more affordable, particularly in ...
Midas's user avatar
  • 6,547
4 votes
Accepted

Why colors are set to high saturated in most smarphones?

Because smartphones are used outdoors... I suspect it is mostly fashion and showing off, as Koen Lageveen suggests here. However, there is a potential usability benefit. Smartphones are more likely ...
Michael Zuschlag's user avatar
4 votes

Why do most smartphones have the charging slot at the bottom?

I feel like there are many valid reasons for this design decision. You already stated one by yourself: docks and other accessories wouldn't really work with the port being on top on the phone. Another ...
QWERTZdenker's user avatar
  • 1,355
4 votes
Accepted

What's the name of this iphone control?

This is a segmented control, from the Human Interface Guidelines (Apple) For Android, you get a reference to Material Design. They have a toggle button .
Mike M's user avatar
  • 24.6k
3 votes
Accepted

Keyboard layout for (learning to / switching) hands

Flipping the keyboard is unlikely to be advantageous to someone forced to use their left hand. It's your brain that locates the keys to be pressed and coordinates your hand and finger into position. ...
Roux Martin's user avatar
  • 14.2k
3 votes

Why aren't dynamic phone ringtones more mainstream?

Sonification is the general term for this, and has been a topic in HCI research for a long time. Your question brings up a lot of interrelated, complex issues, but in my opinion the basic question of ...
eclarkso's user avatar
  • 141
3 votes

Why do manufacturers allow Android's 'takeover'?

It sounds like there is more to the story than meets the eye, so I'll try to tackle it from a number of different perspectives: Firstly, it would appear that you have created some bias through the ...
Michael Lai's user avatar
  • 26.7k
3 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

This is actually a really good example of Darwinian evolution in action: The natural analog might be something like a flight-capable wing on an ostrich: The natural habitat for ostriches favours ...
Roux Martin's user avatar
  • 14.2k
3 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

In the past people used to use cellphones mainly to talk and text only, nowadays people doesn't use smartphones JUST for that, so you don't need to use the keyboard all the time but just on demand ...
Alejandro Veltri's user avatar
3 votes

Determining app compatibility and iPhones?

TL;DR It is ultimately the developer's choice of which older device to support, based on their time, effort, and the current adoption percentage of those devices. Explanation This actually boils down ...
badhanganesh's user avatar
2 votes

Are smartphones accessible or operable by blind people?

Yes, smartphones with touchscreens can be used by blind people. Just like with any other computing device with screen, a screen reader is needed, which outputs what is displayed on the screen in a ...
unor's user avatar
  • 3,946
2 votes

Multiple notifications for the same thing

This is not a complete solution, but perhaps an idea to reduce the annoyance. Both emails and the Amazon app are able to determine (with some reliability) if the user has read the message. Email ...
Prinsig's user avatar
  • 268
2 votes

What is the best mobile number authorization strategy?

I have to be honest and say I have never liked the idea of verifying mobile phones as a security measure. More places are starting to use this as their sole verification method, which causes major ...
Monomeeth's user avatar
  • 3,826
2 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

The reason why apple specifically veered away from a physical keyboard was because of this question: "If I don't want a keyboard, why do I need to have one present?" This truly speaks to the idea ...
UXerUIer's user avatar
  • 5,435
2 votes

Why do most smartphones not have a physical keyboard?

It can be that physical keyboards will come back some day. Of course, they make phones more bulky etc., but virtual keyboards are extremely bad for fast typing and ESPECIALLY in many languages other ...
Leonid's user avatar
  • 21
2 votes

Why colors are set to high saturated in most smarphones?

Seeing that bright and colourful display and might cause you to think "wow this is a great phone I'm going to buy it". That experience and the moment of purchase is actually a pretty strong part of ...
Koen Lageveen's user avatar
2 votes

In landscape mode on a smartphone, should the positioning of control elements be based on whether the phone points to the right or left?

Go for consistency, generally, so the user doesn't wonder why the app is showing differently depending on the landscape position (the general expectation is it will not, I presume). That said, there ...
Alvaro's user avatar
  • 16.8k
2 votes

UI controls during full screen reading

To me the problem is not so much the presence of the buttons as the position, one at each end of the screen, what means: two more possibilities to make mistakes clicking the wrong point. If both ...
Danielillo's user avatar
  • 18.3k
2 votes

Why do most smartphones have the charging slot at the bottom?

Having watched a lot of phone teardown videos from JerryRigEverything, I can safely say that placement of ports depend entirely (especially, of late) on other components. A lot components NEED to be ...
Shreyas Tripathy's user avatar
2 votes

Cross or left arrow to return to the previous page?

Left arrow seems more appropriate in this case, you are not trying to close the whole flow but to return to the previous route, if you provide a little more context about where are you on the process (...
Gabriel Serrano's user avatar
1 vote

Image size high-fidelity prototype

Resolution should match the target device whenever possible, both for prototypes and production. For instance, images for an apple retina mobile screen should match its @2x/@3x guidelines, but also ...
Cody Reeves's user avatar

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