Slashdot Asks: How Do You Navigate Your Smartphone?

There are many different ways to navigate a smartphone. Some devices employ capacitive touch navigation buttons in favor of on-screen navigation buttons for the back, home and overview commands. Others, such as the recently released Moto Z2 Force and Moto Z2 Play, feature a mini trackpad under the display that lets users navigate their device through a series of swipes (on-screen navigation buttons are used by default, but the option to use the "one button nav" mini trackpad can be enabled in the settings). The upcoming iPhone 8, for example, may feature a software bar in lieu of a physical/virtual home button, introducing new gesture controls for returning to the home screen and switching between apps.

How do you navigate your smartphone? Given the many different options available on the market, do you think there is one method of navigation that trumps the others, or is it a classic case of "different strokes for different folks?"

Comments

A Keyboard? Pfftt. Luxury

[rsilvergun]

I use punch cards the way God and Nature intended.

I organize it & use search

[ThomK]

I was in repair shop once (because my iPhone's phone jack wouldn't take the stereo mini cable I was trying to stick into it anymore. I thought something was bent inside the hole, turned out it was just jammed with pocket lint.) and the clerk did something I now do every day.

She took my phone, and instead of hunting for the settings icon, she swiped down, hit the letters "se" and the settings icon presented itself! She f*cking searched for it! I do that with spotlight on my mac all the time, I don't know why it didn't occur to me to do that on my iPhone, but I sure do now.

So to answer the question:
1. I try to delete apps aggressively, that helps.
2. I put the most used stuff on the first page, leaving empty space if that's required.
3. I group games together and tuck them away.
4. I search for stuff I use once in a while.

Its an ongoing process. The problem is there's a long tail graph of usage of apps. My iMessage, phone and Skype apps get used a ton, my sense app and a few games get used once a day, settings etc, once a week and a hand full once a month. The remainder probably need to be deleted.

The iOS app/interface manager isn't that great. Sure I have full control, but damn, help me out a bit. Doesn't the windows phone sort apps by usage? That would be amazingly helpful. So would a notification of what apps should probably be deleted.

I don't want that much fine grained control & it's stressful to see all that crap on your phone.

Re: I organize it & use search

[Dixie_Flatline]

iOS 11 will automatically delete old apps that havenâ(TM)t been used in a long time if you ask it to. Itâ(TM)ll keep the data around, and you can just restore it from the App Store if you want it again

Re:How do you navigate your smartphone?

[Mr D from 63]

WTF? How do you navigate your smartphone? That's your fucking question? Texas is flooding, the earth is going to shit, and your biggest question is how to use a freaking product that my grandma can use (in her grave)? I navigate the damn thing with the freakin GUI provided and don't really GARA if someone else is swiping while I'm typing, or wiping.

Let's ponder the truly hard questions in life;
How do you turn off your lights at night?
How do you deal with seeds in seedless watermelons?
How do you decide how long to heat food in your microwave?

By yelling at it!

[Mr.CRC]

I navigate my Moto E go-phone mostly by yelling and screaming at it, threatening to toss it, and uttering lengthy expletives about the programmers who created its perplexing and idiotic UI.

It took me a few weeks to figure out how to answer the damn thing. It's still unreliable, as hitting *anything* by accident instead of performing the correct touch gesture makes it leave the answering context. I had to look up the manual (yeah the freakin' *manual*) to learn how to answer my phone! You would think they could have printed a little "swipe that-a-way to answer phone -->" on the screen to give new operators a clue. But no... If you fail to answer it with the right gesture, then it provides a menu of options including everything EXCEPT "Answer the fucking phone." There is some way to get back to having a chance to answer it, but I forget what it is. Then of course it always turns on the camera as the side button activates it.

It is a hideous thing!

If I didn't have Linux for my PCs, I would be extremely unhappy with the computing world, because everything else is borderline unusable by comparison.

I would rather just have a simple phone. Maybe with an .mp3 player feature. Of course, such a thing no longer exists :-(

Siri

[tsa]

I use Siri for all my phone navigation. You learn a lot about the world that way, because most of the times she doesn't understand me.