Windows 10 Mobile adds reachability hack to compensate for incompetent UI designers

Over at Windows Central, Daniel Rubino has found that when the new Windows 10 Mobile build 10136 is installed on a phone with a screen size larger than 5 inches, a new feature is enabled. The new feature is very similar to Apple’s reachability option on the iPhone 6 Plus which allows you to reposition the contents of the screen in the lower half of the screen so that you can reach poorly-placed buttons with one hand while holding the phone. While on the iPhone, the feature is activated by double tapping the home button, on Windows 10 Mobile, you have to hold down the Windows key at the bottom.

We’ve pointed out how bad this design is before when the iPhone first added the feature and it’s only a little bit worse on Windows 10 Mobile. On the iPhone, the reachability function increases the amount of work required to tap a button at the top of the screen by 300% by adding a double tap, where as a single tap on a button right below your thumb is much much faster and easier. On Windows 10 Mobile it will require holding down the start button for a couple seconds. That’s even worse since you can’t activate it quickly. (Maybe they can switch it to a double tap before release.) There’s a built-in loss of efficiency and speed. However, both of those methods are much better than having to reach to the top of your screen with a second hand or tweak your first hand by repositioning it while holding a large-screen phone.

@joebelfiore I hope your #Windows10 phone UI designers read this: http://t.co/IdYYiPyrNf pic.twitter.com/WonvuBG1KN

— Adam Z Lein (@adamzea) January 22, 2015

Windows 10 Mobile has so far been one of the worst offenders in terms of UI design with its inconsistent use of two different styles of extended menu buttons (both hamburger style and ellipses menus), inconsistent use of icon labels, poor button placement at the top of the screen, etc. The UI changes are by far what most Windows Phone users are complaining about but thankfully it’s still a beta version that’s still has some time for improvements. This new feature will help with one-handed usability for apps with user interface designs that don’t take usability into account. Check out Windows Central’s video below for a look at how it works:

Conclusion

With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft was in an excellent position to bring a great new user interface to the world of smartphones. Everything was text-based so that you could understand it. Buttons and navigation were at the bottom half of the screen so you could reach them. Hubs organized 3rd party apps and functions in a way that made sense. People and communications were a central theme. Unfortunately it seems that everyone is already accustomed to the awful user interface designs and app-centric operational modes from iOS and Android. App developers only want to cater to the two largest ecosystems and therefore adhere to the design principles of those ecosystems and therefore stop any kind of progress in its tracks. With Windows 10 Mobile, Microsoft is heading towards making their ecosystem a bigger part of the platform agnostic ecosystem that encompasses iOS and Android, and that means bringing on bad UI decisions just because people are used to it.

At least this reachability hack will mean less painful hand acrobatics when trying to use a Windows phone in the future.

Originally published on Pocketnow on June 17, 2015.