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The compelling feature on this phone everyone's missing: Let's say you have to browse through a bunch of stuff on your phone. The very moment you start doing t
by drcode 12y ago
The compelling feature on this phone everyone's missing:
Let's say you have to browse through a bunch of stuff on your phone. The very moment you start doing this, you have a problem: There's a #%&! finger covering up the screen now!
The idea behind this phone is simple: All browsing of information is done by tilting the screen, leaving the display completely unobstructed... sure, other phones have tried to do this before. However, they were shit, because they didn't involve 4 years of AI research to develop the world's most sophisticated head positioning system ever, like Amazon apparently did. This is probably the only way to make the tilting accurate enough to not be annoying.
Only a company run by a fantically focused guy could put that much R&D towards such a specific and non-obvious feature.
That said, until I can hold the device in my hand and verify that this "tilt to browse information" is 100.00% perfectly implemented, this phone can still end up being a failure, like all similar devices that came before it.
- __david__ 12y agoThat doesn't really seem compelling to me. I've never felt the problem of having my finger in the way while scrolling, and I'm pretty dubious of tilt scrolling. I'll reserve final judgement until I've had my hands on the phone or seen other people's hands on reviews, but right now this really seems like a solution in search of a problem.
- drcode 12y agoMy hypothesis is that adding this feature to a 4.7 inch device has the potential to make the user experience equivalent to maybe a 6.7 inch device, because a finger covers up the equivalent of 2 inches worth of screen real-estate. Wouldn't you like a 6.7 inch phone that only takes 4.7 inches of space in your pocket? (That said, only time will tell if I am right)
- rayiner 12y agoDo you keep your finger on your phone while reading a page? I flick, read, flick, read, etc.
- drcode 12y agoUnfortunately the finger constantly gets in the way so I have to move it.
- terrywilcox 12y agoI have an opposable thumb, so I just move my thumb off the screen when it's in the way. It's like when I'm holding onto something; I just move my thumb off to let go.
- pistle 12y agoI hope it doesn't end up like playing balance a bubble to keep things from constantly sliding around. You think people's motion sickness from iOS7's parallax lock screen was something? But I would love to see solid, intuitive improvements in UI like this.
- ChrisClark 12y agoHopefully there is more to it than just using the cameras like a gyroscope. Because tilt to scrolling with just rotational information is already very possible.
- discardorama 12y ago> Let's say you have to browse through a bunch of stuff on your phone. The very moment you start doing this, you have a problem: There's a #%&! finger covering up the screen now! Unless I'm wearing mittens, it's never been a problem in ~6 years of smartphone use.
- phreanix 12y agoPlus, fine motor skills seem easier with my fingers rather than my whole hand having to learn to tilt in increments. I find that mobile browsing (especially with smaller text on my phone) involves smaller, fine movements that I can't imagine doing by tilting.
- vlunkr 12y agoYes if that is a problem you probably need to rethink your app design.
- EpicEng 12y agoI can honestly say that I have never once felt that my finger was getting in the way of using my phone.
- beachstartup 12y agoi don't think finger-in-the-way is the problem. i think reaching for buttons one-handed is the real problem they're trying to solve. on my iphone when the back/forward button is at the top of the screen, i can't reach it.
- mrcwinn 12y agoEveryone's experience is different I guess, but I have never once in my life found myself trying to peer around my own finger. Touching the screen to control where I want information to move is intuitive and precise. Tilting a screen is, for me, very counterintuitive and imprecise. And despite Sergey Brin claiming it's emasculating to touch a screen, I still find the experience a bit magical. Really I don't see the Fire as being any different than what Samsung has done: it's harder and harder to innovate on hardware, so you come up with some whimsical feature that solves a problem few actually have. But who knows! Maybe it's just great.
- azinman2 12y agoExactly. I've never felt like it was a fundamental issue because I can always move my finger. My biggest concern is this will be the new phone rotation that I always turn off because as soon as I want to read in bed it'll start to scroll constantly. Maybe they've figured this out but knowing the correct orientation plane to start, figuring out that I'm simply moving myself around or temporarily putting the phone down and I don't want it to scroll, or any of the many other similar scenarios seem very problematic to me. That said firefly and the dynamic perspective looks very cool. Not sure how often I'll want to scan the world around me but maybe I'm wrong. The DP seems more like the thing that would affect everyday more radically. Hopefully it doesn't get gimmicky and annoying and instead seems like what it should have always been like all along.
- gknoy 12y agoI noticed it most glaringly in playing Samurai vs Zombies. You tap to the right or left of your character to move them, and that means that my finger is directly in the way of seeing whether there are enemies to interact with.
- GFischer 12y agoFingers are very bad for some games, menu-based RPGs for example :) but those weren't good ports to Android. If there's significant adoption, it could enable some gimmicky gameplay :) (like Nintendo DS) or gimmicky apps. Maybe one of those turns into a killer feature and we'll see the next gen of smartphones playing catch-up. It's an interesting gamble.
- jbigelow76 12y agoDidn't Samsung already try to address the "finger issue" (which has never been a problem myself or anyone I know of complaining about) with their scrolling via eye tracking, which turned out to be a nothing more than a gimmicky battery slayer?
- revscat 12y ago> There's a #%&! finger covering up the screen now! At which point I use the abductor pollicis brevis, adductor pollicis, etc. to do something quite amazing: I move my thumb out of the way. Alternatively, I can use the same muscles to scroll the screen to a point such that I can see any obstructed content. The benefit of this method is that I maintain my original viewing angle. I also have finer motor skills in my thumb than in my wrist, and thus I suspect I have greater control. (FYI: Might want to tone it down a bit. You sound like an astroturfer.)
- jds375 12y agoIt's not about your finger being in the way necessarily, it's about usability. Supppose I'm eating lunch. It would be nice to read an article with my phone in one hand and hold my sandwhich in the other. Or if I'm lying in bed just reading. It would be great to not have to keep scrolling the phone with my other hand. I'd rather my phone just do it for me.
- npizzolato 12y agoCan you not do all of that with one hand already? Reading while eating is actually harder if you need to tilt the device rather than swipe your finger. You could always place the phone on the table and just use your finger, or move the phone while you eat to keep it in your view without any of the tilting being interpreted as other things by the phone.
- vlunkr 12y agoOr hold it with one hand and scroll with your thumb. Either way, not a compelling argument, you still need to use your hand.
- Glide 12y agoStill seems gimmicky because I can easy flick and scroll on my phone using one hand. If that's the main thing the Amazon Fire has to offer I'm really not impressed.
- 12y ago
- evilduck 12y agoI'm taking the opposite stance, this is a stupid gimmick until proven otherwise. Scrolling with my finger can happen on the very edge of the screen or area of interaction and it's easy to move out of viewing obstruction. Tilt-based interaction has existed for years on iOS and Android using the accelerometers. It's not a responsiveness or tracking issue, it's that interacting with screens at oblique angles is annoying and many times tilt/rotation interactions require pretty large arm movements compared to finger movements, limiting when and where they're useful. Maybe Amazon made it so amazing these can be overlooked or they were solved, but I'm not buying into the idea just because it uses cool computer vision technology.
- drcode 12y ago> this is a stupid gimmick until proven otherwise I actually agree with you, I'm just saying "Hold on guys, a rational argument can at least be made that this isn't just a stupid gimmick" ...but we have to try the device to know for sure...
- Chronic28 12y agoOr we can stay with the devices we have now.
- Zelphyr 12y ago> this is a stupid gimmick until proven otherwise Thus my objections to Fire Phone. It seems like a lot of gimmicks and little actual solving of real problems.
- squeaky-clean 12y ago> it's that interacting with screens at oblique angles is annoying When I saw the tilt features, I was very confused. Tilt the phone's screen away from you in order to read Yelp reviews? What? So in order to get more details, I need to make the device harder to read. Maybe it is a good feature, but the examples just make it seem like a gimmick that will get in the way.
- 12y ago
- WalterSear 12y ago> However, they were shit, because they didn't involve 4 years of AI research to develop the world's most sophisticated head positioning system ever, like Amazon apparently did. As someone with some experience with amazon's kindle labs, IMHO, the only accurate part of this statement is that Amazon invested 4 years in it. Also Bezos isn't focused - he's a micro manager, who is constantly muddling the work of the people he's hired, to ill effect.
- _pmf_ 12y agoThis could be on par with the switch from resistive to capacitive touch screens. It's a smack in Apple's face that they took a feature that iOS 7 had as a utterly useless and distracting gimmick and did something useful and disruptive with it.
- mfish 12y agoexcept this may not be either useful or disruptive. Perhaps Apple relegated it to a gimmick because they knew that tying something as fundamental as navigation to it would not work. Just think of all of the people who claimed they got sick from or were simply terribly annoyed by all of the motion in iOS7. Now imagine that this motion is the foundation of your device. Does not sound useful or disruptive to me. I think Apple's face is blissfully smack-free after this particular announcement
- georgemcbay 12y agoSorry to pile on here, but this is not a real problem for me and as someone who is 6'2" with hands to match, someone would seem to have to be really fat fingered for this to be an issue; plus tilt scrolling is worthless in one of the primary contexts I use my phone, which is mounted to my dashboard as a GPS/hands-free unit. I bought a Nexus 5 this year and kind of pre-regretted it because I thought I should wait to see what Amazon came out with when they announced their long-rumored phone, but now I feel great about it. None of the much touted features here are really things I care about, though I get that my perspective is not universal (eg. Mayday might be great for my mom(1), but not useful for me. Ditto unlimited cloud storage, I already need a long term solution for the images I take with my Canon 70D and Sony A7 cameras, having something that is unlimited only for the small set of cellphone camera photos I take isn't useful for me; YMMV if all you use to take photos is your cellphone, but even in that case I would be reluctant to tie myself to Amazon in that way since it becomes a friction point to upgrading to a different kind of phone in the future). The glass back doesn't help things either; I learned that lesson with the Nexus 4 -- never again. And lastly the price isn't very attractive in the recent world of inexpensive but powerful Android phones, especially when you're tied to AT&T. (1) [except for the fact that the most likely big problem someone like her would run into is not being able to connect to the network in the first place, which is obviously not a problem Mayday is well equipped to help with]
- drcode 12y agoI actually wouldn't buy the phone either: This phone is totally unappealing to a superuser, except for that one appealing feature.
- pohl 12y agoThere's a #%&! finger covering up the screen now! Forgive me, but this was the first thing I thought of. (A collection of clips from television commercials for as-seen-on-tv gadgets, showing helpless ordinary people trying to do things like slice tomatoes, etc…) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08xQLGWTSag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08xQLGWTSag
- gcb0 12y agoI solved that using a Nexus One until now. it has a trackball. i can scroll content and click any button on the screen with not even smudging it. but apparently only you and I care about not having a finger on top of what you are reading.
- return0 12y agoI would like to see a phone with a wheel on the side for scrolling.
- JohnTHaller 12y agoYou tilt the screen to activate the alternate view and now you can't see it due to the angle of the sun.