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I’m not sure what your point is. If you want to attach an external keypad to your phone, those certainly exist. A touchscreen is a trade-off between shitty butt
by jacobolus 9y ago
I’m not sure what your point is. If you want to attach an external keypad to your phone, those certainly exist. A touchscreen is a trade-off between shitty button feel vs. profoundly expanded UI flexibility, making it a much more general purpose input device. Touchscreens are not built into phones because they are cheaper than buttons.
If you want a phone that does nothing but make phone calls using numerical codes, nice physical buttons are surely better. If you want a “phone” that does 1000 other things, the physical buttons are untenable.
I think desktop computers should come with much better physical keyboards (ideally properly hand-shaped instead of stupid rectangular slabs) with nice buttons and many analog inputs (trackballs, sliders, jog wheels, ...), but for a pocket device forget it.
- projektfu 9y agoI think this is a better example of what GP was talking about: https://goo.gl/images/5YLQk3 https://goo.gl/images/5YLQk3 The "buttons" are hard to find and the only feedback is audio. And they can't be reconfigured like a phone screen.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI didn't mean a touch screen. I meant those glowing surfaces you have e.g. on appliances. Like these: http://www.rapidkeypads.com/img/uniform-led-lighting/selective-led-lighting-white-icons.png http://www.rapidkeypads.com/img/uniform-led-lighting/selecti... They are popular primarily because they're as cheap as they can possibly get - they have no moving parts. It's a combination of worst aspects of physical buttons (non-reconfigurable) and touchscreens (no tactile feedback).