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Ultraboy94

buttons or touchscreen?

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seems now that most new smartphones rely on just a touchscreen and maybe 2 or 3 buttons to work. this is good in some ways but in others it just dosent cut what buttons could.

if you wanted a new smartphone (or if you do), would you choose a smartphone with a decent set of buttons or one with a complete touchscreen?

i would pick one with buttons... they may be a good deal bigger but at least i can play stuff like doom and duke nukem 3d on it (a lot cheaper than if i used an iphone.) also i dont really like getting any screen too grubby and greasy and even when using something like a stylus a touchscreen can get pretty dirty over time.

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Ultraboy94 said:

also i dont really like getting any screen too grubby and greasy and even when using something like a stylus a touchscreen can get pretty dirty over time.

Just this reason is enough for me to look down on any touchscreen phone.

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I hate tiny, over-sensitive touch screens. I much prefer something with a little more tactile feedback (and no, phone manufacturers, making the phone vibrate when I touch a button is NOT tactile feedback!).

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This kind of debate comes up in NDS circles as well. Too many games are produced which rely almost exclusively on the touchscreen, completely destroying what might have otherwise been a decent piece of entertainment. It's all about knowing when to use the touchscreen and when to use traditional controls. The funny thing is that the gimmicky nature of touchscreens should have worn off by now but alas, the gimmick continues unabated since consumers (and, often, manufacturers as well) are generally retarded.

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Touchscreens suck. And still, the company I work for even insists on making any apps we make touchscreen controlled only! They want the keys to be inoperable!

Totally idiotic but 'that's what the market wants...'

Why don't I believe that nonsense...?

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I don't really like touchscreens. Even with clean hands you're going to leave fingerprints on it.

Of course, I'm not really the demographics concerned by all these fancy cell phones: my cell phone is a bare-bones model that can pass phone calls, send text messages, and serve as an alarm clock. It's not a camera phone, it cannot browse the web, it cannot run custom apps, or anything like that. And I plan on keeping it for as long as it'll work because I don't need anything more.

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Personally, I prefer buttons.

Don't get me wrong, I like touchscreens (I like to draw >.>, and my tablet pen thingy just doesn't feel right...), but when it comes to games, I luff me some button action. I do not have cell phone service... but I do hav e cellphone, sony walkman cameraphone with a 4gb card in it so I can use it to listen to my music wherever I go (mp3 player for the car, cell phone for carrying with me). Now, that can all be easily accomplished with touchscreen, but... I also have a nintendo emulator on my phone... And John Carmack redid wolf and isn't he doing doom and quake also for the iphone? So, combine classic consoles and luvverly id fps games, and you have a very strong case for buttons. Sure, you CAN play these with touchscreen, but imo buttons are just way better. To me it seems like trying to use two mice to try and play an FPS, and less of an analog stick like what they were going for. And that's saying nothing of playing FF3j with touchscreen...

Graf Zahl
Why don't I believe that nonsense...?


Because you think about things rather than daydream about what would be cool?

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Blargharghargh said:

Because you think about things rather than daydream about what would be cool?



That perfectly sums up the mentality of the people I work with... :D

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Before touchscreens flooded the market, people were perfectly content with buttons. When the touchscreens started coming, they were marketed as the greatest new interface, and like sheep to slaughter, people fell for it. Standard marketing techniques + easily led consumers. When they tell you that llama shit is the greatest food since pizza, people will start having terrible breath...

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Considering I work in a warehouse, a touchscreen is not the optimal decision for me. Could be wrong, but it just seems like it would break too easily.

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What about your thoughts on heat-sensitive buttons on electronics? My HD Radio has them. I like them. Just a slight touch, and they work.

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Buttons all the way for me.

Ask the kids at school though and they are all like "Buttons, who'd want buttons? Buttons are so lame".

That's who the manufacturers are making their phones for.

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I currently work in cellphone development; I like the tactile response of keys, but the design choices at your disposal for this kind of environment is hopelessly shitty. A mouse, or the more portable counterpart, the stylus pen, are just inconvenient middlemen. Touchscreen is the way to go, though I feel much can and should be done about the smudging and the unintended blocking of screenspace with your fingers.

Edit: surprised to see so many people rooting for buttons. Clearly you guys don't do anything more complex with your phones than texting and calling. How about configuration options? Web browsing? Filling out forms? Spreadsheets? File management?

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Zaldron said:

Edit: surprised to see so many people rooting for buttons. Clearly you guys don't do anything more complex with your phones than texting and calling. How about configuration options? Web browsing? Filling out forms? Spreadsheets? File management?


I do all of that on my laptop.

Honestly, I mainly use my phone as a means to keep the time (since I don't wear a watch), and call people when I need to. I don't text a lot, and when I do, I'm usually just responding to people who message me.

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Krispavera said:

I do all of that on my laptop.
Honestly, I mainly use my phone as a means to keep the time (since I don't wear a watch), and call people when I need to. I don't text a lot, and when I do, I'm usually just responding to people who message me.

But that's the thing, that kind of use shouldn't even need buttons, a good speech-to-text parser could take care of that better than buttons could ever do. A smartphone is supposed to be used in more advanced ways.

There's just no way *tap* *tap* *swish* *tap* is worse than MENU DOWN DOWN RIGHT RIGHT SELECT LEFT LEFT DOWN UP NEXT NEXT NEXT SELECT DOWN NEXT NEXT SELECT DOWN DOWN SELECT BACK LEFT LEFT DOWN RIGHT MENU DOWN DOWN SELECT SELECT EXIT.

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Zaldron said:

Clearly you guys don't do anything more complex with your phones than texting and calling. How about configuration options? Web browsing? Filling out forms? Spreadsheets? File management?

The prospect of doing that on a cell phone feels me with dread. Not because of the button thing, but mostly because of the screen size thing. To be comfortable doing such thing, I require a screen large enough to make calling the resulting gizmo a "phone" absolutely ridiculous. Or I could say that my laptop is a cell phone, after all I could plug a micro and use skype...

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Not trying to be contrary here Zaldron, but for one, I stutter every now and again (depending on the level of inebriation that I'm currently at), as such, it's easier (and faster) for me to type. I, for some reason (maybe because I've grown up on a keyboard) don't lose my ability to hit buttons, but I do lose my ability to speak wihout fuck as a filler between words, and my ability to see less than two of any one thing (at certain times) can become compromised.

You also aren't taking into account people with big fingers, like myself, so when I use a touchscreen, I might be intending to use the very tip of my finger as the point, but the software uses the center of the mass, so I'm "clicking" slightly off of where I'm actually pointing. Let me tell you, that gets fucking annoying. I hate touchscreens because you're simply not going to be able to make a totally compatible one because of the range of differences between people. Buttons, on the other hand, they're physically present, able to be physically manipulated, with as much precision as your manual dexterity allows; with a touchscreen, you're at the mercy of the software developer and what they think is a reasonable method of determining what they think the user might be trying to do with the touchscreen. I mean, have you even seen the pen-to-text crap they used on PDAs for like ever?

Sure, you can do some really cool stuff with touchscreen, and I'm not saying "BAN touchscreens because they weren't relased immediately perfect with total and complete usability across all demographics" I'm saying, "don't take my fucking buttons you nazi bastards!"

Look at the handwriting of some of your co-workers and then tell me you want to write the OCR software to detect what they're trying to write. Yeah, somebody will eventually do it, but I'd rather get kicked in the balls than have to deal with translating the handwriting of a bunch of geeks who only ever handwrite things when it's on a touchscreen or when the power is out. Sure, the phones will eventually get into the hands of people who don't write like small children because they use a keyboard for everything, but you know exactly the type of person who's going to get your phone first, and who will be writing the reviews, and it certainly ain't going to be the english teachers, it's going to be the geeks.

Gez
The prospect of doing that on a cell phone feels me with dread. Not because of the button thing, but mostly because of the screen size thing. To be comfortable doing such thing, I require a screen large enough to make calling the resulting gizmo a "phone" absolutely ridiculous. Or I could say that my laptop is a cell phone, after all I could plug a micro and use skype...


The difference between phones and laptops is shrinking more and more, and to be honest, I'd rather carry a laptop than a phone, because I can watch movies WITH people on my laptop, whereas when I put movies on my phone, I'm the only one that can watch them (I just wish the walkman supported more codecs ;.;)...

<.< I think I might just go and see if there are any J2ME decoder apps...

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Jodwin said:

Just this reason is enough for me to look down on any touchscreen phone.


Same. I'm fine with buttons. Having a big screen is cool and all but I really don't need it if I'm smudging it all the time.

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I use a G1 for my rare phone call, semi-rare text message and frequent internets-on-the-go. It's interface is faster to use than if you were using buttons, but the downside is that it does get smudgy and thus your fingers don't slide as nicely over the touchscreen surface. For selecting small links on web pages it's also inaccurate enough. It has a little trackball thing to move through links, but that's too damn sensitive.

I'm not sure if I would want to go back to button though. Scrolling through menus and web pages is 10x easier than any button-based interface I can think of. Mostly because the phone's screen is so small that scrolling both horizontally and vertically is a must if you want to view your average webpage like these forums. That said, I wouldn't trade it's built-in keyboard for any phone without it. Typing text on a touchscreen is painfully slow.

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Real men only use buttons which can take some punishment, unlike fragile and weak, wimpy touchscreens. Touchscreens are only for snotty, prissy, wannabe-tech savvy swots :-p (or Apple users, close enough).

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Buttons. If I want to dick around with browsing the web, I'll use my computer for that.

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Belial said:

Wow, Zaldron advocating the use of silly gadgets.

How unexpected.

I use a piece of shit ancient samsung phone to call people and maybe send SMSs. Up to very recently, I refused to have a celphone, not because I'm some retarded individualist but because I hate carrying things. Things being watches, wallets, rings or whatnot.

However, I'm not stupid enough to gloss over the fact there's people out there who do field work with their celphones. Everything from SSHing to Linux servers on their iPhones on the go to fix last second problems to access/modify data repositories out in the middle of nowhere, such as isolated farming areas. I'm not pulling this out of my ass, these are our clients and I've been told they generate 9 million unique hits a month, and that's just for a relatively no-name company like the one I work for.

The prospect of doing that on a cell phone feels me with dread. Not because of the button thing, but mostly because of the screen size thing. To be comfortable doing such thing, I require a screen large enough to make calling the resulting gizmo a "phone" absolutely ridiculous. Or I could say that my laptop is a cell phone, after all I could plug a micro and use skype...

A pain I share deeply. But I think it has more to do with lameass UI design rather than space. We're talking about resolutions that are bigger than our old VGA/SuperVGA screens here. While it's certainly small on a physical scale, I feel there's not enough use of context and what I call the pyramidal presentation of complexity in most apps. Fuck, not even colours are used intelligently. But that's bound to improve just as mice-focused UIs did.

I stutter every now and again ....for me to type
You also aren't taking into account people with big fingers, like myself...

All valid points for you, but have the kindness of recognizing you're hardly the median.

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In the end, this debate is senseless because the space dedicated to buttons could very well be occupied with a larger screen/another touchscreen, one which does nothing but show and act the same buttons it sought to replace. I used to like tactile feedback but I have a feeling it's more of a crutch and something you can grow out of. I mean no one misses manual carriage returns anymore.

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Eponasoft said:

I use my cellphone to make phone calls. That's it. If you need file management, a web browser, etc, get a pocket PC.


My cellphone is a pocket PC.

It has a touchscreen, a dpad and several hardware buttons, and a slide out qwerty keyboard. Best of both worlds.

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