The Home Button Issue

Lukas Mathis cogently demonstrates one of the iPhone’s worst shortcomings:

If an iPhone user gets confused about what’s going on, it’s never quite clear how to get the phone back into its default state. If you’ve just opened a folder, the home button will close it. If you’re in Springboard, but no folders are open, the home button will move you to the first screen. If you’re on the first screen, it’ll move you to the Search screen. And so on. The home button does different things, depending on the current state of your iPhone.

He also linked to this process map of how the home button works, and followed up:

It’s not clear to me why Apple does this at all. If I launch an app from the fifth home screen, is it highly likely that the next app I want to launch is also on that home screen? If I launch an app from inside a folder, is it highly likely that the next app I want to launch is also inside that folder? Probably not. So why not just send me to the first home screen when I hit home? That way, I always know where I end up when I hit «home».

Excellent stuff. This is just one example, in my opinion, of how much innovation is yet to come in mobile OS design. This competition hasn’t even got started yet.