Touchscreens and people in need

The cliché

The future is now, or at least that’s what most people would tell you. What just 10 years ago sounded like sci-fi, is now part of our everyday lives. The world is at our fingertips almost everywhere we go. But enough clichés. Let’s talk real.

Two months ago, me and my husband bought our first touchscreen handsets. We replaced the “outdated” keypad phones with smooth and sleek ones. The first week we would stay late in the night, exploring “just one more feature”, “just this cool app”, each of us in their corner, staring in the small screens for hours.

When all the fuzz was gone and these became just phones with more games and occasional use of wi-fi, I gave it a true thought. And it started to hit me.

Keypad zen and touchscreen madness

While I had my old phone, I had learnt to use it very quickly: I open the fold, press a key combination and in an instant I am at the right menu item or dialing a friend. I had learnt the exact time I have to wait until I move to the next character while typing an SMS message, and for any other frequently used functions.

But with the touchscreen, this is almost impossible. First, you always need to unlock the screen. Then it’s the lag from all the images changing, dimming and fading effects (although I’m not using most of them and have a plain black theme, it’s still a problem). You also need to fix it in portrait or landscape orientation, otherwise it’s constantly trying to follow your hand’s position and again lagging and blinking.

Although the touchscreen might seem to be intuitive and more “natural”, it lacks tactile feedback. You can’t navigate through the menus or write a message without looking at the screen. Period.

With my old keypad phone, I used to type a whole SMS message, choose recipients and send it with no need to look at it. Using the phone in the sunlight was also no big deal, because it was enough to just see part of the screen to know exactly what I was doing.

The touchscreen makes it much more difficult – you can’t feel which key you’re pressing, the vibration doesn’t help you much, and there is lagging which causes more typing errors.

Slow dialing

The most frequent use of my phone is speed dialing my husband. With my old phone I was doing it maybe 10 times a day – I think of it and in the next second the phone is dialing:

1. Open the fold

2. hold 7

3. hi baby

4. bye baby

5. close the fold.

Now it’s like that:

1. take the phone from the pouch

2. unlock the screen

3. look at the screen

4. open the Dialer app

5. press and hold 7

6. hi baby

7. bye baby

8. press End call

9. lock the screen

10.phone back to pouch.

Two times more operations. And each of them requiring attention and more time.

A touch of life

You might think I sound like a stupid chick. Maybe you are right.

But give this one a thought:

All phones sold in Europe support the so called S.O.S. call. Even if your phone is locked, with no SIM, no balance etc., you can still dial 112, it automatically unlocks and dials. If you can’t see the phone, there is a small bump on the 5-key, and you can easily find the 1- and 2-keys. You dial 112 in a second.

But that’s the old-fashioned, keypad phones.

The touchscreen phones require your attention. S.O.S. calls are made slowly. Death-causing slowly.