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The Problem with the iPhone's Home Button

• vectorpush 15y ago
  The real problem with the iPhone home button is that it requires a metric ton of force to register the depression.
• parfe 15y ago
  I have a similar problem on my Droid X. Sometimes the back button goes back a page (such as in a web browser) or while reading a message back will go to my contacts list (in google talk or google voice). But sometimes, in the same apps, the back button might take me back to the home screen (If i answered a message from the notification bar), or a previous app if something launched a browser. It's incredibly aggravating that the behavior changes, and especially so as Android devices have a home button! Back should be constrained to a specific application. Otherwise in google talk I have no reliable way to get back to my contacts and usually have to make a trip back to the home screen to directly launch the talk app.
  • LukasMathis 15y ago
    Yeah, I've noticed that, too. If you jump directly into, say, an individual email on Android, you can't move "up" inside the application. I wonder if I'm just missing something.
    • etherealG 15y ago
      I think they leave the "up" to the in-application UI. e.g. with email there's a button to go back to the inbox, but the physical back button takes you back to where you were previously. This seems more natural to me than for the back button to take you "up" in the application you're in. Otherwise how would you go back to where you were before?
      • juliano_q 15y ago
        Yes, it is natural to me too. If I am at the home screen and click on an email notification, I expect to read the e-mail, hit back and be back on the home screen, not in the inbox.
      • LukasMathis 15y ago
        Thanks for the explanation! (Yeah, I realize that using the back button to invoke the application's back function would cause its own set of issues. It's a case where the same button needs to do two different things based on the user's current mindset, which the phone obviously won't know about.)
      • fpgeek 15y ago
        Honeycomb adds the equivalent of the "up" button you're describing here. The convention is that in the upper left corner of a screen there's a button that takes you to your "home within the app" (e.g. the inbox for Gmail). I expect that this will filter into phone UIs with Ice Cream Sandwich.
  • jinushaun 15y ago
    Unfortunately, it's really up to the discretion of the app developer to decide what "back" does. There are guidelines and "best practices", but nothing dictated by the API or operating system. The back button always goes backwards in the history stack, but the app developer can push new pages onto the history stack however they see fit. An analogy on the web is either navigating to a new page (back button works), or loading a new page on top of the current page (back button doesn't work).
  • ConstantineXVI 15y ago
    The back button in Android is supposed to mean "take me to the last screen I was on"; it's not supposed to be tied to the specific app you're in. I have the reverse issue on iOS, if Twitter launches a browser there's no obvious way to get back to the screen I was on in Twitter beyond calling up the app switcher[1] Honeycomb introduces an "up" button[2], and it can be presumed the concept will make it's way to ICS. [1] PSA: you call up the Android switcher by holding Home [2] This isn't a hard button like home/back, instead the app logo gets painted with an "up" arrow when this is available.
  • jrockway 15y ago
    There's no such thing as a "specific application" in Android. With that in mind, the back button behavior makes sense. Launch your email client from the home screen, read a message, click a link. When you hit back in the browser, you go back to the email message. When you hit back in the email message, you go back to the list of messages. When you hit back in the list of messages, you go back to the home screen.
    • Peaker 15y ago
      That's not entirely true. When you hit back in the browser, you go back to the email message iff the browser did not open with an existing history. If it did, then it navigates to the previous page inside that browser, instead.
      • MatthewPhillips 15y ago
        I'm unable to reproduce this bug. I clicked a link from an email message and the browser opened the link in a new tab (several tabs are open). I clicked back and it took me to the email message.
        • jrockway 15y ago
          Same. I use K9 mail and Android 2.3.
        • Peaker 15y ago
          If I have the maximal 4 open windows in my browser, and then click some link, it cannot open in a new window, so it opens it in an existing window. Then, back manipulates that window, rather than returning from the web browser itself.
          • jrockway 15y ago
            OK, but this isn't a recent version of Android, right?
  • dolinsky 15y ago
    I think the presence of a hard back button in Android is something that iOS is sorely missing. Whenever I switch from using my Droid X to my iPad I am constantly looking for the 'back' button, especially when installing an app from inside the Apple App Store (I find it very annoying that iOS kicks you out of the App Store and brings you to a seemingly random home screen just to show that it's now installing an app). The back button in Android does have the fault of not always being consistent, but that is due to it being usable by the developer of individual apps. I find it extremely useful that I can be doing something in Tweetdeck, click a link which opens up my browser (Dolphin HD), view the full article, and then just press the back button to go right back into Tweetdeck. That's just not possible on iOS. Also, long-pressing the back button in certain apps (like Dolphin HD) provide a nice shortcut to quitting the app (instead of keeping it running in the background), which helps on battery life.
    • zentechen 15y ago
      Can't say much about Android, but the Back button on the Windows Phone is unreliable and doesn't always take you back to where it's supposed to be. It's just confusing. I much prefer the simple UI that iPhone has with a single button.
      • contextfree 15y ago
        fwiw, I've had completely the opposite experience. I've found the back button a godsend on both WP and Android platforms, and haven't really noticed this unreliability. Actually, as a user I prefer to use my Windows phone over my other devices almost entirely because of a combination of two features: the back button (missing from iOS) and a decent soft keyboard (missing from the Android phone I have, which is running 2.2. I've heard the keyboard in 2.3 is much improved, but unfortunately the upgrade wasn't available for my phone last I checked). There are a lot of things the other platforms have over the WP, but being able to have those two things together is enough to outweigh all of them and ensure that my SIM card stays in my Windows phone 70% of the time ...
        • sandipc 15y ago
  • hnsmurf 15y ago
    The back button on Android is fundamentally broken. WebOS is the only operating system that really does this right, and it's because they've architected the entire OS around it. The way apps use scenes and stages makes the whole thing flow. Proper back button behavior isn't something you can bolt on, but Android could still get much better than they are.
• S_A_P 15y ago
  At first read, I found myself disagreeing with his assessment, mainly because app folders have allowed me to have a single page of apps. I do find that the state of the folder remaining open is slightly annoying. As to his point, I agree with him when I think that home should bring you home, not to almost home. As a counterpoint to this, I do find that I use the same 3-5 apps most of the time on my phone so double clicking home as actually most efficient as I can double click and tap to get to where I want most of the time, though sometimes I do need to swipe through the list a page or two.
• modernerd 15y ago
  He's right. The default Home button behaviour should be to go the first page of the SpringBoard. The current behaviour even appears to contravene Apple's own iOS Human Interface Guidelines: "Give people a logical path to follow. Make the path through the information you present logical and easy for users to predict." and: "In most cases, give users only one path to a screen." From: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/UEBestPractices/UEBestPractices.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH20-SW5 http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UserEx...
  • username3 15y ago
    It's easier to go to the first page by press the home button again than to swipe to the fifth page all the time. If we press the home button accidentally, it's easier to open the same app if it's on the fifth page although we could double click the home button. The way it is now is good if we have a group of apps on the fifth page that we use for a certain situation.
    • LukasMathis 15y ago
      If you exit an application accidentally, you can get back using the task switcher, like you say. The other situation you describe (you have a set of applications on a screen far away from the first home screen, and want to launch many of them at the same time) seems uncommon. It's typically bad to have a UI that makes the common case worse in order to make an uncommon case better.
      • jbrennan 15y ago
        The unfortunate thing I don't think a lot of regular users even know about the Task Switcher tray, and really they shouldn't have to. But I don't have data to back up "a lot of regular users", just anecdotal experience with them.
  • christoph 15y ago
    One trick Apple clearly miss here (IMO) is not having the "Home" screen centered. On iOS devices, page 1 is always at the far left. i.e. Screen 1 -> Screen 2 --> Screen 3 ---> Screen 4 ----> Screen 5 On a lot of Android launchers, you can have page one centered. i.e. Screen a <--> Screen b <-> Screen 1 <-> Screen x <--> Screen y What's the benefit? I can get to my two most used screens both within 1 swipe. In fact the most swipes I need to access any of my five screens (from the Home) is 2, on iOS as above it's 4 (for the same number of screens). You could argue that some people use "Search" so much it negates this, but I think search should be accessed in a slightly different way to how Apple have it programmed in now anyway.
• dgeb 15y ago
  I've always found the tactile experience of physically pressing the home button to be disruptive to the iPhone experience. I'd rather see them do away with it entirely, widen / lengthen the screen, and switch to a breadcrumb style navigation bar. Imagine a swipe up scenario from the bottom that would show your full location using symbols (and allow you to navigate back with a press): Home > Home Screen 4 > Running Apps > Current App Home > Current Page in App
  • dgeb 15y ago
    This would also do away with the doubly annoying double click required to view the currently running apps. These little tricks don't fit with iOS, which is so appealing because of its simplicity and intuitiveness.
  • gfodor 15y ago
    On the iPad, you can avoid the home button altogether. A 3-fingered squeeze gets you to the home screen, and a 3-fingered upswipe gets you the task list.
    • dgeb 15y ago
      Thanks for the tips - quite useful! However, I think that this reliance on gestures means that the usability gap will widen between those who are "in the know" and those who aren't. If iOS developers only use the shortcuts, they may not notice the annoyances of the default experience.
• panacea 15y ago
  If the iPhone had a home button and a back button, this wouldn't be an issue. But adding a physical back button is completely anathema to Apple's DNA. Similar to the lack of out-of-the-box right-click functionality with their meece.
  • dkberktas 15y ago
    I agree, also what is the point of having a physical button if you can have it on the touch screen as long as you use the real estate in a clear way.
  • seanalltogether 15y ago
    Which is funny to me because this dogma has led them down the path of using arguably more complex multitouch gestures in lieu of the simplicity of hardware controls.
  • tibbon 15y ago
    But the back button (if I'm remembering right) on the Android (which is always there) isn't always consistent in its functionality. In some apps it does one thing, in some apps it does another. At least the home button is more consistent.
    • Pewpewarrows 15y ago
      Android has both a home and a back button. The inconsistency you talk about only happens when authors poorly create their applications. Android's entire multitasking functionality is built on top of a stack of activities, which is easiest to think of as a stack of screen views. I start at my "desktop", click on my Photo Gallery, decide to share an image using Dropbox, and it takes me to choosing a Dropbox folder. That's roughly three activities or so (depending on how many screens within each app I have to go through) all on a stack. Built properly, if I decide I don't want to share on Dropbox while choosing a folder, I would just hit the back button, it'd pop the Dropbox folder browsing screen off the stack, and take me back to browsing my Photo Gallery. Poorly-created apps will try and "recreate" their internal activity stack when they're not supposed to. Let's say that getting to Dropbox's folder browser if I were to launch the app independently took four activities in and of itself. If Dropbox was poorly written, it would try and recreate that natural flow of previous activities when you're just trying to do a share, so hitting the back button won't take you to the Photo Gallery from sharing. Sorry, it's complicated to explain but makes perfect sense when you're actually using a device. The tl;dr is that if app developers don't suck the back button's behavior is seamless and consistent.
• jrockway 15y ago
  The problem is that it's not the "Home Button", it's the "Back Button". I use Android, but I do see the value of the single-button UI. Although it may not be the "get me home ASAP button", it is easy to learn what happens. The only thing you can do with the phone is press that button. That makes it very easy to learn what's going to happen, and it's easy to predict what will happen in the future.
  • cdcarter 15y ago
    But, it is the home button! It always takes you to a variant of the home screen, and a given app can't change it's behavior. If you click a link out of an email, it doesn't take you back to email, it takes you to the home screen. Just, some random folder on some random page.
    • artursapek 15y ago
      It ignores apps and goes back through your history in the home screens, hence the randomness you mention
• evilswan 15y ago
  Good analysis. I've definitely noticed the creep of more and more being added to the Home button in subsequent iOS releases. I've not seen iOS 5 yet, but I hope that no more functionality is triggered by the button.
  • Xuzz 15y ago
    I think it now also closes the "Notification Center". (And the diagram also missed one usage, as spotted by @rpetrich: it also closes an iAd.)
    • ugh 15y ago
      I just tried and it indeed closes the notification center. Wow. That just seems wrong.
      • evilswan 15y ago
        +1 Damn!
• yesimahuman 15y ago
  I found the iPhone search functionality basically useless. Having search be part of the home screen made my experience worse.
  • pinko 15y ago
    That's funny -- I love it. I rarely swipe off the home screen; I just find it easier/quicker to launch all other apps by name. Usually just takes a character or two, since it seems to prioritize past selections when sorting search matches.
    • artursapek 15y ago
      How many home screens do you have? I don't use many apps so mine is kept to one screen so I can get anywhere in just a few taps. I just get annoyed everytime I overclick onto the search screen. It's hard to believe Apple doesn't allow its users to disable it.
    • r00fus 15y ago
      If I could, I would just make search the homescreen (if it also had the dock with it's 4 default apps also). I have so many apps it's easier to find by search than to go to the page+folder.
• jinushaun 15y ago
  I like the physical home button (as opposed to Android's capacitive buttons), but I do agree that it's way too overloaded with functionality. Single click. Double click. Click and hold. App switching is a chore and takes way longer than it should to complete a task. However, more buttons is not the answer. iOS needs WebOS's multitasking gestures badly.
  • bgruber 15y ago
    for the record, there are plenty of android phones that use real physical buttons for those 4 buttons at the bottom of the android screen. using capacitive buttons is a manufacturer choice.
• lukeschlather 15y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of the search button and the menu button is, but I really hate using a phone that lacks hardware back and home buttons.
  • nooneelse 15y ago
    On my phone, the search button is what I hold down to get to the voice command pop-up. Very useful.
  • jokermatt999 15y ago
    Search is somewhat optional, but I guess it got its spot because of Google. It is pretty useful, and I use it all the time, but that's just my behavior. Menu brings up options for what you can do in an application. For example, in the browser, hitting menu brings up the URL bar and bookmark button (which can also be reached by scrolling to the top of a page), as well as a bottom row of icons with "New window", "Bookmarks", "Windows" (tabs, basically", "Refresh", "Forward", and "More" which contains all the esoteric options for a browser. I guess this could also be put at the top of a browser, but having a handy menu button to bring it up is quite nice for screen real estate. Think of it sort of like hitting alt when you're in a full screen browser to bring up the menu.
    • fpgeek 15y ago
      What can irritate me about the menu button is that you don't know whether there's anything available unless you press it. It is particularly annoying when you think options should be available and they're not (or they're not where you think they should be). Honeycomb cleans this up with the action bar. The action bar is on top of the screen and contains whatever actions are currently available. If there are more actions available than what can be fit in the bar, then they get put in a visible overflow menu. The key improvement here is that the action bar is (almost) always visible, so you can quickly glance at it to see what actions are possible (rather than the more complex menu-button flow).
• hnsmurf 15y ago
  Remembering state intuitively makes sense because the real world remembers state. Apple uses a lot of real world metaphors, such as the inertial scrolling, for this reason.
• molecule 15y ago
  another problem: iOS waits to see if you're going to press the home button a second time, and this pause effectively introduced a performance regression to the User Interface. thanks, Apple!
• pkamb 15y ago
  I have a similar issue with many iOS apps I use occasionally. I'll start up the app, weeks after last using it, and instead of the app's main screen it'll take me somewhere deep in the app. The screen where I last left off, weeks ago. I don't care about that task, that was weeks ago. I'm opening up the app to start a new task right now. Take me to the main screen. Safari has a similar issue. It will constantly save the last search you did. Every time I want to search, I have to delete the old search term first. Even 10 days after searching that term. A 2-minute timeout would be better.
  • Hisoka 15y ago
    Is this a fault of the app design or the iPhone? It seems it's up to the app to determine the last open date and switch back to the home screen
• zuppy 15y ago
  I have a different problem with that button: it brakes on all ios devices that I own. I broke it on a 3g, on a 4 and now i'm very close to do that again on an ipad. In the past, I had to push it just when I wanted to exit, now there are many new actions assigned to it.
  • smackfu 15y ago
    Yeah, my friend had a new iPhone 4 left in practically useless state after 4 months due to the button going bad. Apple replaced it under the warranty but that's not good. (It could easily have happened out of warranty.)
    • randomdata 15y ago
      iOS 4.3 has the four finger gestures to simulate the home button if you enable it, and 5.0 is rumoured to have gestures to replace all of the physical buttons. No excuse for rapidly failing buttons, of course, but it will allow out-of-warantee devices to continue to be functional without costly repairs, which is good news.
      • khafra 15y ago
        My home button is failing. I hadn't heard about finger gestures to simulate it, but it'd be really nice to be able to exit an app without 30 seconds of repeated pressing.
  • fictorial 15y ago
    I haven't experienced that but the lock button on my iPhone 4 did break. Now the phone cannot be locked manually. I have set the auto-lock timeout to be 1 minute however.
    • afterburner 15y ago
      This why I use the Cydia apps Quick Lock, SpringJumps, and the SBSettings close button. The first, Quick Lock, shows up as an app, but all it does is turn the screen off when you press it; this saves wear on the sleep button. I keep it on the home screen. The second, Springjumps, lets you insert button (or apps) that, once pressed, jump to a specific screen number. I have one on the bottom bar that jumps back to the home screen (page 0). To turn off my screen I typically press the go-to-home screen SpringJumps button followed by tapping the QuickLock button which I've placed in the middle of the home screen (didn't want to use up a spot on the bottom row but maybe I should). Finally, the SBSettings close button lets me close apps without pressing the home button, from inside the SBSettings display. You could probably also configure the activator to "close" given some gesture. This keeps the wear and tear on that one button to a minimum, for when I really need it, or for when I'm feeling lazy or rushed. Triple-home-button press? Forget it.
• zentechen 15y ago
  I don't quite recall but isn't there a setting that you can change the behavior of Home Button, both single click and double click?
• mrseb 15y ago
  Aza Raskin has written about the Home button before: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-problem-with-home/ http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-problem-with-home/ And other iPhone buttons, too: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/in_my_recent_article_about/ http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/in_my_recent_article_about/
• dkberktas 15y ago
  If you have many pages or folders, going directly first page will make start from scratch every time you hit the home button which for me very annoying. Say I am reading news from CNN app, when I close the app, I am expecting to see the news folder for BBC.
• tobylane 15y ago
  Everyone needs some basic instructions on how to use something, in this case it's what is a click or a double click, what a slow double click does. When you simplify it that much it makes perfect sense to remember which springboard page you are on.
• 9999 15y ago
  I group my applications roughly around similar functionality (language learning apps on one screen, games on another, utilities on another, etc.). When I use the home button to return to the SpringBoard, I usually want to open an application from the screen I launched from, not an application from the first page (which are in all likelihood accessible from the task switcher anyway). So Apple's way works for me.
• fictorial 15y ago
  I would like a different SpringBoard in which there's just a single vertical scrolling list of icons with the app name to the right instead of the current horizontal pages and app groups. This list could be sorted by last-used-date or alphabetically. Hit the home screen once to go to this list.
• vxpster 15y ago
  For comparison, a visual guide to the Android's home button: http://i.imgur.com/JHlPD.png http://i.imgur.com/JHlPD.png
• rchowe 15y ago
  I find it interesting that this is a reversal from the days of the spatial finder[1] in OS 9: Apple is implementing the spatial metaphor and people don't want it compared to when they took the metaphor away and people complained. [1] I can't find a great link to describe this. Suffice to say the paradigm was that each folder had a new window and the windows stayed where you put them.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• ralphsaunders 15y ago
  I don't have an iPhone, but I thought holding the homebutton down returned you to the homescreen, making this a non-issue?
  • sapphirecat 15y ago
    On my iPod touch, holding it eventually gets you to a flaky voice control system. I also have the option of setting up a11y functions on triple click. Once I got used to it, the home button is okay, but it can register anywhere from 0-2 clicks for any given press. That is the bigger issue: I never truly know where I'll end up even if I do know how it should work.
• monochromatic 15y ago
  Apple should hire this guy. He eloquently described something that's bothered me for a long time about my phone, and the solution he came up with was one that hadn't occurred to me... but now that he's mentioned it, it seems clearly like the right answer.
• Cyph0n 15y ago
  Good point. It always bugs me when I hit the home button and end up in one of my custom folders when I actually needed something from the home screen. Perhaps a Cydia developer could make a tweak to avoid this problem?
  • jevinskie 15y ago
    Check out HomePage on BigBoss. It goes to page 1 instead of the last viewed page. Unfortunately the last time I tried it it had some bugs with open folders but that may be due to InfiniFolders.
    • Cyph0n 15y ago
      Thanks for the heads-up.
• ohyes 15y ago
  Counterpoint: I have fat fingers, I mis-click apps a lot. Sometimes I just graze safari or something when I am scrolling. Current functionality takes me back to the place where I left off. I easily click the app that i actually wanted. Imagine my frustration when I mis-click an app, and instead of taking me back to the place where I was just a moment ago, it warps me back to the first page of applications. I have to rescroll through a few pages of apps. After doing this a few times, I curse Steve Jobs' name and hurl the device from the driver's side window... lamenting the day I bought it. I hollar to my driver. He snaps his whip, urging my fine brace of stallions on-wards... to my local Verizon store where I purchase The Jitterbug: a testament to Human Interface Guidelines and ease of use.
  • dpark 15y ago
    I have thin (well, average) fingers and this still happens to me. I agree that dumping the user back on the home screen in cases like this would be a terrible design choice.
  • jankassens 15y ago
    I also thought about mis-clicking. This could be solved with a small timeout (say 1 second) before the home button has the new behavior and brings you to the first screen.
    • dpark 15y ago
      Baking in a magic threshold seems to be a worse option. No matter where you set the threshold, it's going to sometimes feel like the 'screen 1' vs 'last home state' choice is random (and wrong).
      • LukasMathis 15y ago
        However, Apple already does this in other cases. If you leave the Settings app and go right back in, you'll find it exactly the way you left it. If you wait (I'm not sure how long, could be hours), you'll start at the top of the app again.
• algoshift 15y ago
  Apple's insistence on trying to overload one and only one button with all of this functionality is the real problem. I understand "cool" design. However, you can't beat hardware buttons and controls when used correctly. The iPhone should have several buttons. Gamers would LOVE this. It should also have a scroll-wheel on the side. I've had several devices with scroll-wheels, most notably blackberry phones. I happen to think that they are fantastic. Need to scroll through your contacts? You can do it with ONE hand. Use your thumb to scroll and click the scroll-wheel button to select. Touch is neat, but it is also a PITA. Typing on iPhone or iPad is decidedly decades backwards with respect to hard-button keyboards. In addition to this, if you regularly communicate in multiple languages it is impossible to use the auto-completion feature and, therefore, you are relegated to making horrible spelling mistakes. I like the devices for what they've done to push tech forward but it'd be nice to see Apple put out a new iPhone with something like a clamshell design and a real keyboard along with some multi-function buttons. It would make the platform so much more useful and easy on the users.
• Shenglong 15y ago
  I've been using iPhone for a year, and this seems perfectly intuitive for me. Maybe this is a bad assumption - but most people have common applications on a page or in a folder. Remembering home screens should make it easier to access other applications that are USUALLY used with the current one. For example, I group all my work (let's say .doc, .xlsm, .ppt) into one folder. When I exit or alt tab, should it switch to the last thing I was on, or should it go to my desktop? You only need to hit Home once anyway and the bit about the double tap is a little silly. A simple tap on the screen will get you out of the folder, and a finger swipe is a reliable method to change screens. I use my phone A LOT: text, email, twitter, fb, linkedin, lal, bloomberg, fxtrade, google voice, skype, and calender on a daily basis... and it's organized in patterns, so it minimizes browsing time.
• NormM 15y ago
  Absolutely agree. How do we communicate this to Apple?
• micampe 15y ago
  I'm willing to bet that if it always put you back to the first screen, he would be saying that the Home button makes you lose context. Design is always trying to find the best compromise.
  • LukasMathis 15y ago
    I'm willing to bet against you. Do you have access to an alternate universe where we can test your claim? :-)
    • micampe 15y ago
      Sure, let me dig out the one where I'd win. (parallel conversations here ;)
• buff-a 15y ago
  I'm somewhat wary of jumping into an issue that is obviously extremely personal and emotional for people, but this remark struck me as odd: You can’t even resort to just hitting the home button blindly a bunch of times, because if you hit it too rapidly, the iPhone will interpret it as a double-tap. What I find odd is that double-tap is the number one way that I launch apps. The author mentions the double-tap as if its a bad thing (in the context of finding an app to launch) and yet double-tap is the way to get to the recently-used apps to display. I can't fault him on the other points, but this seemed like a blind-spot.
  • kobepanda 15y ago
    I totally agree. As has been established elsewhere, most users only use 3-6 applications on a regular basis. Double tapping the home button bring up my most recently used applications along the bottom of the screen one of which is probably the one I want (not sure where the author got the idea that double tapping the home button brings up the search screen-- old version of iOS?).
• gabiruh 15y ago
  Is this guy nuts? I'm on iOS 4.3 and I only need to hit the home button twice in a row to get from Safari to the home screen. One hit to send Safari background, and another hit to scroll from the current screen to home screen.
  • kissickas 15y ago
    If so your Safari is not in a folder.