> "Like what? A different way of shrinking the screen, or are you thinking there's a way to enable one-handed use without shrinking?"
This is a hard problem - one that I would've preferred avoiding altogether by keeping screen sizes sane ;) But alas, that ship has sailed.
I wasn't aware of the Samsung or LG way of doing it - IMO both of them are pretty shitty also and an admission of defeat. This is the vendor saying "totally unusable one-handed without throwing away half the pixels". Apple's way seems marginally slicker, but still sucks.
Unfortunately the best idea I have is probably not particularly tenable - we have to abandon the top of the screen for interactive elements. Google has already in some ways done this with material design - back, home, and switcher are all lined up along the bottom, and all primary actions confined to the Floating Button, also at the bottom.
But getting third party apps to buy into abandoning the top third of the screen is probably not going to happen.
Alternatively this is a chance for more gestures to come and play. On iOS the top of the screen is predominantly taken up by the Back and Confirm actions (top left and right, respectively). We already have the edge swipe for back, which works so well that I practically never use the actual back button anymore. Perhaps what we need is an equivalent gesture for "Confirm". That way the two most common uses of the top corners won't require touching the button at all.
This is a hard problem - one that I would've preferred avoiding altogether by keeping screen sizes sane ;) But alas, that ship has sailed.
I wasn't aware of the Samsung or LG way of doing it - IMO both of them are pretty shitty also and an admission of defeat. This is the vendor saying "totally unusable one-handed without throwing away half the pixels". Apple's way seems marginally slicker, but still sucks.
Unfortunately the best idea I have is probably not particularly tenable - we have to abandon the top of the screen for interactive elements. Google has already in some ways done this with material design - back, home, and switcher are all lined up along the bottom, and all primary actions confined to the Floating Button, also at the bottom.
But getting third party apps to buy into abandoning the top third of the screen is probably not going to happen.
Alternatively this is a chance for more gestures to come and play. On iOS the top of the screen is predominantly taken up by the Back and Confirm actions (top left and right, respectively). We already have the edge swipe for back, which works so well that I practically never use the actual back button anymore. Perhaps what we need is an equivalent gesture for "Confirm". That way the two most common uses of the top corners won't require touching the button at all.