Comment by abruzzi
7 years ago
To me the biggest hinderance is no the small screen, but the touch UI. Think of something simple like text editing. Because the UI has to differentiate simple taps and everything else, there is an inbuilt delay between the simple tap, and the more functional tap-and-hold. But since there is only one tap and hold, then it becomes tap-and-hold-and-select-action-from-menu-then-complete-action. Thats how I think of the simple action of selecting some text. Something the keyboard or mouse both accomplish much faster.
I don't use my phone for much of anything but calling and bored web browsing anymore, but I'd genuinely love for my iPad to be more functionally useful, but the issue above is similar to a lot of other interaction limitations. I really can't imagine using any mobile app on my desktop, and I can't imagine using any of my desktop apps on mobile (admittedly the desktop apps I use are on the more complex side things.)
Indeed, tap-and-hold is an inefficient gesture on touch-powered devices. Swipes and taps are much more convenient. (In fact, I don't even think that the gesture is used for anything on touchpads, even though it could be. Even for drag and drop, you activate it by "double-tapping" and then swiping away, not letting the double-click register. In general, UI-interaction on touchpads is quite advanced, and proves just how much ground there is to cover on mobile.)
The biggest obstacle to a genuinely productive UI on mobile, I find, is the lack of pervasive and easy confirmation and error-recovery for potentially-unwanted inputs. System management interfaces (e.g. community-built "recovery/modding" environments) get this right (everything that's potentially unwanted gets a "perform a swipe to confirm input" prompt), but almost nothing else does.
Have you considered getting a bluetooth keyboard/mouse? It makes text editing on tablets/phones much more tolerable for me.
> Have you considered getting a bluetooth keyboard/mouse?
Not OP... a BT kb/mouse has been a great consumer-friendly boost on larger tablets for me but sadly... lots of applications (on Android) don't really take advantage of this. They are still very heavily optimized for touch-only.
Example: MX Player (my fav Android player) does a great job binding keyboard presses to actions (spaceBar: pause; arrowKeys: forward, back, etc..)
In contrast, VLC for mobile lacks this "polish". Mobile browsers are another example where actions could be optimized for mouse input but I haven't come across a browser yet that acknowledges mice as a separate input source.
fyi (for anyone interested in tablet to laptop conversion to lessen gorilla arm):
Zagg Folio for 10" tablets (basically turns a tablet into a laptop). I picked this up a couple of years ago (not too many available for Android, most are essentially flimsy stands). They also have similar for smaller handhelds:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Keyboard-Android-Tablets-10...
I have tried a bluetooth keyboard and at least for text editing it helps immensely. (Does a mouse do anything iOS?) In the end the iPad plus keyboard is clunky enough that i end up preferring a small laptop. Admittedly, I am not a typical user.
Not sure about iOS. On Android I've found a mouse is helpful about 50% of the time and still resort to just poking at the screen sometimes.
Using a keyboard has been absolutely wonderful though. It's even saved me a few times when I didn't have my laptop with me and had to ssh into work servers for issues.