As my iPhone ages, the double click on the home button is becoming harder and harder to do. The physical button itself just isn't very responsive anymore. Devoting this essential function to something that can degrade over time seems like a big oversight for a company that puts such stock into industrial engineering.
Actually it isn't. When your button wears out you can just buy a new iPhone. Same goes for fraying wires in Apple power supplies and USB cables. They have no economic incentive to provide longevity beyond the warranty period as they are primarily a hardware company.
Actually, due to a class-action lawsuit[1], Apple has to replace frayed MagSafe power adapters with the newer L-shape ones for free. I just got mine replaced a few weeks ago. I agree that Apple should have done a recall, or even notified users.
That's a step in the right direction, but the cord still frays at the brick end unless you leave a big loop before wrapping the cord around it. And the USB iPhone connector still frays. It would be nice if they'd adopt the standard flexible nubs designed specifically to avoid this fraying problem, but when aesthetics and practicality come into conflict at Apple, aesthetics usually wins.
Many have had some luck spraying a bit of WD40 on the 'home' button to get it working smoothly again.
I agree, however, that the home buttons on iPhones (and I assume iPod Touches and iPads) wear out too quickly. My 3Gs's home button was getting pretty bad after two years of use, even with lubrication, though I will admit to having gotten a fair amount of sand and possibly a bit of seawater in it, and having disassembled and reassembled it several times, so that may not have helped things.
I have only seen the problem of the home button becoming unresponsive on the iPhone 4. I didn't have that problem on any of the previous generations. Try taking the phone into an Apple Store and see if they will replace it for you.
In that case, you're either stuck with another physical button that will have the same problem, or one of those capacitive back buttons that I find extremely frustrating.
I agree with fragsworth -- the back button is almost a necessity and double-clicking the home button and clicking the first task switcher icon is a poor substitute.
It's missing so much that I find myself expecting the in-app back button to go back to the previous app if I click it enough. BTW, I've never owned an Android phone so my expectations aren't carried over from another OS -- it just seems natural and it's jarring when it's missing.
The back button isn't that great in Android. I'm never sure if back is going to take me back to another screen or out of the app completely. Sometimes if the app is launched from another app pressing back doesn't take you back to the originating app.
As an iOS and Android user the Home button is still my favorite. It's what I'm used to and for the most part they work the same on both platforms.
The back button should follow the users path; if I'm in an email, then a click a link, and then get an SMS then the back button should take me from the SMS message, back to the browser, and then back the email.
However, applications need an additional bit of UI so that from the SMS message you could go "back" to the list of all messages, etc within the app. It sounds like, on Android, there is some confusion between these two use cases and other issues that make it unreliable. It's a shame because the concept is sound.
Speaking of which: double-click is (IMHO) the worst possible solution for this. I keep accidentally getting to the search screen. "Home" button design is partially at fault here (why it's concave?) but the whole thing is clearly an after-thought addition to the system. Long-touch or some kind of a gesture would be way more convenient.
> Long-touch or some kind of a gesture would be way more convenient.
Precisely. And we already have the solution at hand, it just lacks implementation:
swipe up from the bottom of the screen
This would reveal the task switcher the same way it reveals the Notification Center, smoothly and progressively. It would thus give both instantaneous feedback and trivial cancellability. What's more, once the move is complete your finger will end up being very close to the switcher's row, so going back one step (or up to four steps, really) would be a swift swipe-tap.
Re "why it's concave?": Concave buttons are less likely to be pressed while sitting in your pocket - waking the screen, waking some background processes, draining the battery unnecessarily throughout the day.
To solve this problem, non-concave buttons (flat or convex) live in wells. These buttons in wells carry unnecessary aesthetic weight - lots of angles and short surfaces in a small space. Apple's hardware rarely carries such adornment - they do smooth, "authentic" surfaces.
As such, the Home button simply _is_ the well - and it's rarely pushed by accident.
I've learned this myself from someone else like you who has passed this on. When I bought my iPhone the manual was extremely vague on features like task switcher. Where did you learn this? (Sorry for going OT, I just wonder if there is a "Secret Guide" somewhere that I've missed.)
Safari has a bookmark to a pretty extensive "iPhone User Guide". It's been there from the start, but I'm sure almost no user knows it. I don't get why they didn't just pin it on the springboard or something (well I do, it'd look kind-of ugly and you should be able to use the phone without a manual, still...)
