Not a Dedicated Follower of Fashion - 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck
Published by Steve Litchfield at 20:25 BST, July 7th 2010
Playing devil's advocate, but only to a degree, Steve Litchfield turns the entire smartphone world on its head by rejecting its latest darling - large touchscreens. Ask any pundit in the mobile world about smartphones and you'll get the answer that it's all about touch. About large displays that can be caressed and programmed and manipulated with your fingers. Except that traditional, non-touch form factors have these 2010 'flagships' well and truly beat - here are the Top 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck.
From the moment the Apple iPhone made touchscreens 'cool' again (don't forget that Psion and Palm PDAs had had touchscreens 12 years previously and Windows Mobile PDAs had kept them going religiously afterwards) by suggesting that it was OK to use your finger on them after all, touch has seemingly been all the rage. Every manufacturer has jumped on the bandwagon, including Symbian partners Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others.
"Touch is best", everyone says. "Touch is the future".
But, in defense of the past, let me proclaim loudly to anyone who will listen that the 'old' button-driven phones have an awful lot going for them in comparison to the new tablet-like touchscreen flagships that seem to be sweeping the world. Will my words be enough to stem the tide? Of course not. But I may just add wider credence to the belief that manufacturers should look to a range of form factors and interfaces and not just try ever harder to produce an 'iPhone-killer'....
So here we go then, the Top 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck.
1. You can't use a touchscreen phone one handed very easily. Yes, you can stab at things with the side of your thumb, but to do anything meaningful you've got to hold the phone in one hand and stab at it with the other.
Button-driven phones can be used in their entirety with one hand and using just your thumb. Leaving one hand free for shopping, or for a child's hand, or for a tube strap, or for a briefcase.
2. You can't use a touchscreen phone without looking. With no physical buttons to press, trying to do something even as simply as hanging up a phone call becomes a distracting experience.
In contrast, common operations can be done sight-unseen on a button-driven phone. Some youngsters have even been known to send text messages while the device was still in their pocket (beyond my T9 skills, but....)
3. Touchscreen phones get dirtier. Or at least the dirt is far more obvious. Spoiling the acres of glossy glass or plastic with a dozen greasy fingerprints.
Whereas the screen of a button-driven phone stays nice and clear. In practice, you'll hardly ever touch it. Even when picking the phone up. Which leads me nicely to....
4. It's hard to pick up a touchscreen phone. Unless you had the foresight to lock the screen, you've got to be careful not to let a millimetre of your skin touch the display, else it'll get interpreted as a screen tap or swipe and before you know it you've launched something or closed something else down or worse. The same applies to touch-sensitive spots on the main case, by the way, making picking up your phone a somewhat delicate affair - and far more prone to dropping.
In contrast, you can pick up a button-driven phone however you like. The chances of a rogue contact happening to depress a physical key sufficiently are very slim indeed. And of course, it doesn't matter one iota if you touch the screen accidentally. Talking of drops and accidents, brings me nicely to...
5. Touchscreen phones are, by their very nature, less robust - however strong the tempered glass front, drop the phone onto concrete from arm height and the chances are good that the screen will crack. Exit one expensive smartphone. And those without tempered glass (e.g. the Nokia resistive touch phones) are just ridiculously fragile and far too easy to scratch with a coin or key by accident - running your finger over a scratched touchscreen is very, very annoying [as I know to my cost, having lent my N97 to a less than careful reviewer]
No such worries with a button-driven phone, as these tend to be far more durable. Even if the screen gets bashed, the worst that usually happens is a scratch or two. Mere battle scars. There are legendary tales of survivability in the All About Symbian camp for devices like the Nokia N82, E71 and N95, for example. And unlike touch-driven phones, a few scratches on the screen are hardly noticed since you're not interacting directly with it.
6. Touchscreen-driven phones aren't usually so hot for music and podcast playback, in that controlling the playback requires a number of taps to get back to the playing interface. Admittedly, well designed UIs can make this slightly easier, the iPhone OS has its music player by default on the bottom of each app screen, but you've still got to exit the current app to get to this; while Android phones can have a playback widget on one of their many homescreens and some even put playback controls in the swipe-down notifications pane. But it's never trivial to change tracks or fast forward a podcast, for example.
In contrast, a number of popular button-driven phones (e.g. Nokia N95, N96, N86, 5730 and others) have hardware playback controls that can be applied whatever else is currently up in the foreground. So, for example, you can be reading your email and decide to pause the podcast that's playing or to skip a music track. One keypress and you're done - on the N96 there are even duplicate media playback buttons so that you can do this whether the upper or lower slide is open. Now that's control.
7. Touchscreen phones are clumsy at playing 'digital' games, where specific direction inputs are needed. Whether a first person shooter or a platform arcade game, a physical d-pad can't really be beaten. In fairness, there are also games where an analogue or 'pointer' system is needed and a touch interface works best for these. An ideal device should therefore have both? 8-)
8. Touchscreen phones are a menace to use while driving. Yes, yes, you're going to say that I shouldn't be using ANY phone while driving. What I mean is that, with my smartphone in a cradle on the dashboard, perhaps giving route guidance or playing back an audio file, trying to interact with it briefly while driving is difficult if everything's touch-based. You end up stabbing hopefully at roughly the right spot on the screen while taking your eyes off the road for a micro-second. And, invariably, because the car's vibrating up and down as you roll over potholes etc, you end up hitting something you didn't mean to and then spend the next few taps trying to undo what you just did. Working with a capacitive touchscreen is even worse, the slightest touch in the wrong place as your hand gets jogged out of position and you're in a world of hassle.
In contrast, on a button-driven phone, you know exactly what you want to do in terms of (for example) 'left fn key', 'd-pad in', or whatever and can do it without really looking at all - and the physical nature of the keys mean that it's almost impossible to depress them accidentally, even if you get jogged by the car's motion.
9. Touchscreen phones are slower to input text on. Generally. Honourable exceptions go, possibly, the the excellent iPhone keyboard and text auto-correction, which seems to forgive almost any mistyping, and also to some of the larger-screened touch devices. But anything with virtual qwerty or virtual keypad input on a 3.2" screen or smaller is a joke in terms of typing.
Typing on a physical qwerty keyboard or even a numeric (predictive/T9) keypad is usually a lot faster, both in terms of hitting the keys you wanted to hit and in terms of haptic feedback that each keypress was successful. And physical qwerty keyboards reign supreme if you have to input many names or passwords or anything with serious amounts of punctuation.
10. Touchscreen phones have, by their very nature, to be physically larger (to be any good). We've seen 3.7", 4" and now 4.3" touchscreens on the market. Many of them already look like slabs held up against people's faces. And have to be pocketed extra carefully. And probably need to be in a case most of the time, which makes them even larger.
Meanwhile, button-driven phones only require a display that's large enough to see what's going on. There's no requirement for things to be large enough to single out with a finger-tip. The result is a form factor which can be dramatically smaller. As an example, compare the Nokia N86 with the HTC HD2 or Samsung Galaxy S. One's a phone - the others, if we're honest, are more 'tablets'. Don't we all want something that's small enough to fit in any pocket and to be unobtrusive when out and about?
In fact, I could go on. Here are three more reasons why touchscreens suck that didn't even make it into the top 10:
- Security. Walk down a city street using a large-screened touchscreen smartphone and you (silently) scream "Mug me, look what I've got in my hands - both of which are occupied". While a button-driven phone is smaller and less obvious and can be used almost invisibly in one hand while the other hand is free to fend off the world - or at least to look confident at being able to do so.
- Price. Touchscreen phones tend to be priced higher than 'old fashioned' button-driven phones. Partly this is down to marketing and partly down to the expensive displays used, along with the expected spec level to go with them.
- Screen contrast. Although the iPhone's transflective (sadly dropped for the iPhone 4) display and Samsung's new Super AMOLED touchscreens are quite visible in the sun, many touchscreen smartphones are still unusable when the sun's shining. Meanwhile almost all non-touch Nokias and most recent RIM Blackberrys have transflective screens that are really very good in the sun.
Now, please don't jump down my throat for overlooking the advantages of touchscreens - of course they're potentially more intuitive in terms of user interfaces, they're more 'fun' to use and the larger displays are, of course, genuinely jaw-dropping in the right circumstances. What I wanted to do in this piece is highlight that there's plenty of room in the market and plenty of uses cases for button-driven, non-touch phones.
Thankfully, keeping things resolutely Symbian, Nokia has committed to produce a range of form factors in the coming years. Just keep your mind and your options open.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 8 July 2010
Categories: Comment, Hardware
Platforms: Series 60, General, S60 3rd Edition, UIQ 3, S60 5th Edition, General, Symbian^3
Feature Discussion
Not recognising this fun factor is clearly why Nokia are being punished in the uninformed public consciousness. You only have to watch the N8 demonstration videos to realise that Nokia is not, as a company, charismatic.
I just wish more companies would build more touch-plus-buttons devices of the N97/Milestone or even Samsung Ultra Touch patterns (why can't Nokia do a dual-slider with a touch screen? Make everybody (un)happy).
The Motorola Backflip, however, we could probably live without.
Also, when I have to mark multiple files or messages, I really wish there was a pencil key that could click and mark away all the files that I want.
The comment about T9 typing without looking at the phone was dead on. That's one of the reason I still keep my N82 around as my official phone. During a meeting, I simply type and send the messages out while the phone is under the desk away from my eyes.
For real power-users the amount of "non-touched" when touched is still far to high.
When something needs to be done I grap the S60v3 on the road instead of the S60v5.
Hoping the N9 will change that, because the N97 didn't.
I'll be sticking with my N86 until Nokia or someone else comes up with a numeric keypad slider, with a 3" screen. THEN I'll be really happy! :)
Good article Steve, and just emphasizes my own point of view. There is no right or wrong, no better or worse, just what suits the individual. Only slightly annoying aspect of this touchscreen love-in by the manufacturers is that new non-touch phones at the higher end of the market seem to have been neglected. :mad:
But being able to write quickly, with almost no typos and running anything I want without any stability issue, is something I miss of my E71.
Waiting for the N9 or E7. Hope will be my ideal phone, big screen, good sound, supreme stability and a full qwerty keyboard.
Totally agree with you steve! A N86 with a touch screen would be awesome!
I think if you would stop viewing what we talk about as "phones" as phones and accepted that the devices can have other roles that are more important, it would all get clearer...
The point is there is still a market for devices with keyboards, and as i have said on here before chasing the touchscreen buck when your reputation is in tatters and your up against google and apple seems way too optimistic.
If i were the pr guru at Nokia the N9 whatever it is being leaked would be the device i would be pushing as an alternative not another me too device.
A better use of slide controls, such as the scroll-wheel used on older Blackberries and the touch+side-slide QWERTY iMate that's hanging around my office with no visible owner, would make one-handed usage much easier on touch-screen devices, acting as a D-pad replacement without making the device bigger or compromising screen size. But that appears to be ex-technology, and the trackball on Android devices doesn't even seem to work on the home screen (disclaimer - that was from briefly playing with an HTC something today).
Don't get me started on how text input on touch-screens is currently several years behind where it should be - I was using systems on a QTopia-based Sharp Zaurus 7 years ago that are only just being rediscovered by Android developers. News-flash, people: Text prediction and auto-correction in software are not new. Not even remotely.
Mind you, Steve's point about the iPhone having the music player icon at the bottom of each screen does point to another option: Having the controls grouped largely at the bottom of the screen, instead of the desktop-style top of the screen, would also ease one-handed usage. S60v5, with its options and exit buttons at the bottom or right is a step in the right direction here.
The durability and grease-on-screen issues aside, touch-screens could be made a lot more efficient and fast to use if a bit of lateral thinking was used.
Like the iPhone on Guardian CiF, AAS threads have to have a Psion mention. My Psion 5 had a fabulous keyboard- the acid test being I never thought about writing something down for speed, it was always the psion that came out for notes, lists etc. That no-one has stuck a phone in a psion is a global catastrophe far worse than any climate change or asteroid impact.
Most of the problems with touch interfaces, especially S60v5, originate from the fact that they're designed with buttons in mind. This is most apparent in S60v5 with it's flawed single tap / double tap interaction inconsistency.
Things are different when entire UI and interaction model is built from the ground up with touch in mind. This also allows to design the interface so that you can't accidentally do something you didn't want to do - like answering a call when picking up the phone. On mini you have to swipe to answer - it's not that easy to do it accidentally. Of course you can accidentally press touch sensitive green handset button. But that is by no means a flaw of the touch interface. This is an example of a very bad design decision. It seems Nokia noticed that and they got rid of redundant buttons entirely on N8.
Of course touchscreens have their drawbacks. But they're much more than just a passing "fashion". People welcome them because touching is the natural way of interacting with things. When touch interface is properly designed, and responsive it'll boost productivity as it removes the middleman - the keys. You get to interact with interface elements directly. And removes constrains of limited number of buttons and their fixed layout. This is a level of flexibility that (if used cleverly) will make touch interface adapt to the task it's supposed to perform - something physical keyboard driven devices are unable to do. Simple example - iPhones keyboard gives you "next" and "previous" that allow you to jump between input fields.
I believe there are few things in this world that downright "suck" or are only "great". There are great and bad touch devices, just as there are physical keyboards that are slowing down text input and ones that are joy to use. But overall touch offers more flexibility. I believe they will coexist but eventually touch will be dominant with keyboards reserved for specialist devices.
As you say, every form factor has its advantages, I just wanted to put in a shout for the 'old fashioned', 'obsolete' little-guy - phones with -shock- buttons! 8-)
One hand typing is almost as good as keypad/boards. Two hand typing is now way better. One hand web browsing is way better with touch, games I don't play but would agree keys are probably better and yes the phones are bigger (but not so much these days). Rightness operation is pretty much there with swipe down to answer and up to ignore. Locking the screen is habit not via the power button ( as with all smart phones) if only to conserve a little battery life..
Now one hand touch typing is about to go way before a keypad with swype, if you haven't tried you should, its a true significant advance in touch screen typing.
All in all I'd not go back to non touch and give up my desire. I have blackberries and e72 & e5? Which I use from time to time but I now always return to touch..
Matt
( typed on my HTC desire)
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but my next phone (after the N8, because it's camera negates any bad feelings I have towards exclusively touch driven phones), will probably either be without a touchscreen or at least with a qwerty keyboard.
Juha.
|
Originally Posted by Unregistered
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE IPHONE GUYS, JUST BECAUSE NOKIA CAN'T SPELL TOUCH LET ALONE IMPLEMENT A REASONABLE TOUCH INTERFACE DOESN'T MEAN TOUCH SUCKS!!
Juha. |
After using E70 for many many years (best keyboard in the world) and now switching to iPhone I'm writing about half the number of the SMS in a month and I kid you not they must be at least two to three times shorter that before. Also it's so much harder now just to damn call someone, to much taps/menus compared to S60.
E71 form factor with touch screen would be a killer.
Also, Nokia please find some decent skin/theme artists together with some experts in UI design, S60 could look so much better with just one really good theme.
Nokia is a long way from dead but so was microsoft and the pc in every house vision has been gazumed by a handset in every pocket and they aren't at the table!!!
Juha
But if i need to reply to mail (which i do 30 times a day) make calls on the street, send sms i pull out the E71, quick easy straight to the point, lasts all day and gets the job done, don't underestimate simplicity.