I'm righthanded and I usually hold my phone in my left hand so I can do clicking and typing with my right hand, but I often do basic scrolling with my left thumb.
I'm a man with typically sized hands. I can barely do anything one-handed on a phone. Phones are so big they basically require two-handed operation for me. Like you, I typically hold it in my left hand, so I can use my right hand to tap stuff.
I agree that phones are too big. I refuse to switch to two-handed phone use. I used the Palm Phone PVG 100 with a 3.3" screen as long as I could, but software got too slow and battery-hungry, and my now-wife was annoyed when my phone would die halfway through our text based conversations lol. Used a chunky 3.5"er (Soyes S10Max) for awhile but it died after a year.
Now I use the Motorola Razr 2025. 90% of the time I just keep it closed. The outer screen is 3.6" and a square, but the screen doesn't extend all the way out if you keep the hinge on the side. It's kinda heavy at 6.6oz (compared to the Palm Phone's 2.2oz), but with a ring, it's super easy to use one-handed. And it has battery life and compute power to handle today's unnecessarily compute-heavy apps. You can also split apps in half when it's open so you can just use them on the bottom half of the phone.
Main disadvantage is that when it's closed, you only have a "selfie" camera as the back camera is facing you and the front camera is inside. So it's hard to quickly take pictures of things I see outside (usually funny birds). Other annoyance is that if you open the phone, use it, and then close it, the outer keyboard resets to the default keyboard and you need to "change the keyboard layout" to get it to use your preferred keyboard (Microsoft Swiftkey in my case)
I’m a guy who’ll leave his laptop on the floor and will bend double from a chair to use it, on the floor, because I have forgotten I can pick it up. I am ergonomically insensitive.
Anyway, I use my phone in my left hand, my right hand, or both, pretty much equally.
As a lefty, his tongue in cheek derision toward lefties still pisses me off genuinely.
I’m old enough to have been smacked around by a teacher as a kid for writing with my left hand. Right-handed bias is EVERYWHERE. Everywhere. Right-handed people will never notice it until they look for it, and even then it’s hard to see.
So yeah I am sure the ribbing is nothing more than “a sensible chuckle” for right-handed people, us southpaws are not laughing. And if you try to tell me you are, I seriously doubt that you are left-handed.
> The older I get, the more sausage fingers I get.
It seems with age fingers do not just get fatter (feet too btw) but also get drier. So the keys do not register as well on smartphones: older people hitting right in the middle of the virtual keys, one by one, in a slow but decided manner are not "just old". There's apparently some science behind it.
Android has an old person setting with larger text and icons and explicit home/back buttons.
I might set up my parents with it, but I currently have it on my phone in my attempt to make my phone less addictive.
The combination of a black and white screen, old person setting squeezing out information, and turning off animations makes my phone feel shitty to use without having to actually block Instagram (which is commonly used for messaging in my circles) or any other app.
I had to read this a couple times and look at the comments here before I realized they were talking about scrolling on a phone. I was like "who scrolls with their thumb?"
something similar actually really annoys me on linkedin mobile, I'm left handed and often accidentally like posts if I scroll my feed as the like button is very close to where I naturally touch the screen to scroll.
sometimes I wonder if things like this are actually dark patterns to _encourage_ accidentally clicking 'like' etc.
similar to how in Threads, the '...' icon (under which 'save' is hidden) is so small that half the time clicking on it just clicks the entire thread (opening it to view replies) -- sometimes I suspect they make the target extra small on purpose
or how on FB, some of the options in the menu are now under the AI generated content, which pops in just slowly enough to encourage misclicks as items shift under your finger
I think they do encourage it - probably due to marketing. If you are getting paid per click its in your best interest to get someone to click irrespective of content. Snapchat do it with the scroll up feature, instead of it going to the next clip as most doom scrollers do, it goes straight to a profile. Vice Versa on other popular platforms. That little 'glitch' for a second, and now a new popup came at just the time you were about to press right where your digit is and you are loading onto a sponsored site. Of course the sponsor then boasts look how many clicks you have got.
NYT games app loads in an interstitial screen with a play button, as you go to click it they shift it up and put a subscribe button there so that when you click you accidentally click subscribe. Evil genius.
It could be accidental, but without that there's no reason to have the interstitial screen at all.
I'm not left-handed, but I often scroll my phone with my left thumb. My right hand is on my computer mouse, or holding a pen, or employed to make precise touches on the phone screen with my right index finger, or briefly comes over to join with my left thumb for typing...
Scrolling doesn't require much precision, and I naturally hold my phone in my left hand.
Reminds me of this old youtube bug where some of the videos that were uploaded ended up upside down because of a phone orientation during recording:
https://bruteforceswimathon.medium.com/youtube-help-my-video...
I'm righthanded and I usually hold my phone in my left hand so I can do clicking and typing with my right hand, but I often do basic scrolling with my left thumb.
I'm a man with typically sized hands. I can barely do anything one-handed on a phone. Phones are so big they basically require two-handed operation for me. Like you, I typically hold it in my left hand, so I can use my right hand to tap stuff.
If you have an iPhone, enabling reachability is very nice [1].
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-reachability-iph1...
There’s at least 3 of us still on iPhone 13 Minis, and I plan to keep it going until Apple caves and makes a sensibly sized phone again.
7 replies →
I agree that phones are too big. I refuse to switch to two-handed phone use. I used the Palm Phone PVG 100 with a 3.3" screen as long as I could, but software got too slow and battery-hungry, and my now-wife was annoyed when my phone would die halfway through our text based conversations lol. Used a chunky 3.5"er (Soyes S10Max) for awhile but it died after a year.
Now I use the Motorola Razr 2025. 90% of the time I just keep it closed. The outer screen is 3.6" and a square, but the screen doesn't extend all the way out if you keep the hinge on the side. It's kinda heavy at 6.6oz (compared to the Palm Phone's 2.2oz), but with a ring, it's super easy to use one-handed. And it has battery life and compute power to handle today's unnecessarily compute-heavy apps. You can also split apps in half when it's open so you can just use them on the bottom half of the phone.
Pictures:
https://www.middleendian.com/phone.jpg
https://www.middleendian.com/phone-with-keyboard.jpg
Main disadvantage is that when it's closed, you only have a "selfie" camera as the back camera is facing you and the front camera is inside. So it's hard to quickly take pictures of things I see outside (usually funny birds). Other annoyance is that if you open the phone, use it, and then close it, the outer keyboard resets to the default keyboard and you need to "change the keyboard layout" to get it to use your preferred keyboard (Microsoft Swiftkey in my case)
1 reply →
I have a regular pixel 10, and I can palm a basketball. But I can't use this phone one handed.
1 reply →
Get a ring for the back of your phone. Makes one handed use much easier.
I’m a guy who’ll leave his laptop on the floor and will bend double from a chair to use it, on the floor, because I have forgotten I can pick it up. I am ergonomically insensitive.
Anyway, I use my phone in my left hand, my right hand, or both, pretty much equally.
Right-handed, and I run into this bug constantly.
As a lefty, his tongue in cheek derision toward lefties still pisses me off genuinely.
I’m old enough to have been smacked around by a teacher as a kid for writing with my left hand. Right-handed bias is EVERYWHERE. Everywhere. Right-handed people will never notice it until they look for it, and even then it’s hard to see.
So yeah I am sure the ribbing is nothing more than “a sensible chuckle” for right-handed people, us southpaws are not laughing. And if you try to tell me you are, I seriously doubt that you are left-handed.
> A bug which won't be triggered by righteous people but infuriating to those who will surely be left behind after The Rapture™.
Or perhaps the righteous versus the sinister.
I approve of Latin jokes. Well done.
Oh no sir, I am merely a humble boorish villain.
The older I get, the more sausage fingers I get.
One of the great things about promoting LLMs is I don't have to care about sausage finger typos any more
To obtain a special dialling wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now
> The older I get, the more sausage fingers I get.
It seems with age fingers do not just get fatter (feet too btw) but also get drier. So the keys do not register as well on smartphones: older people hitting right in the middle of the virtual keys, one by one, in a slow but decided manner are not "just old". There's apparently some science behind it.
Android has an old person setting with larger text and icons and explicit home/back buttons.
I might set up my parents with it, but I currently have it on my phone in my attempt to make my phone less addictive.
The combination of a black and white screen, old person setting squeezing out information, and turning off animations makes my phone feel shitty to use without having to actually block Instagram (which is commonly used for messaging in my circles) or any other app.
I had to read this a couple times and look at the comments here before I realized they were talking about scrolling on a phone. I was like "who scrolls with their thumb?"
something similar actually really annoys me on linkedin mobile, I'm left handed and often accidentally like posts if I scroll my feed as the like button is very close to where I naturally touch the screen to scroll.
sometimes I wonder if things like this are actually dark patterns to _encourage_ accidentally clicking 'like' etc.
similar to how in Threads, the '...' icon (under which 'save' is hidden) is so small that half the time clicking on it just clicks the entire thread (opening it to view replies) -- sometimes I suspect they make the target extra small on purpose
or how on FB, some of the options in the menu are now under the AI generated content, which pops in just slowly enough to encourage misclicks as items shift under your finger
all to make some PM's numbers go up, of course...
I think they do encourage it - probably due to marketing. If you are getting paid per click its in your best interest to get someone to click irrespective of content. Snapchat do it with the scroll up feature, instead of it going to the next clip as most doom scrollers do, it goes straight to a profile. Vice Versa on other popular platforms. That little 'glitch' for a second, and now a new popup came at just the time you were about to press right where your digit is and you are loading onto a sponsored site. Of course the sponsor then boasts look how many clicks you have got.
NYT games app loads in an interstitial screen with a play button, as you go to click it they shift it up and put a subscribe button there so that when you click you accidentally click subscribe. Evil genius.
It could be accidental, but without that there's no reason to have the interstitial screen at all.
I'm not left-handed, but I often scroll my phone with my left thumb. My right hand is on my computer mouse, or holding a pen, or employed to make precise touches on the phone screen with my right index finger, or briefly comes over to join with my left thumb for typing...
Scrolling doesn't require much precision, and I naturally hold my phone in my left hand.
The solution is simple : don’t use LinkedIn :) I only use it when looking for a job and I never look at the “feed” (what’s that for anyway?)
I get more useful and up-to-date info from LinkedIn than from here.
3 replies →
[flagged]