NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, January 2012
Smartphones (Part 2) Control and Interaction
By Phil Sorrentino,
President, Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., FL
March 2011 issue, Sarasota PC Monitor
http://www.spcug.org
president (at) spcug.org (click to email author)

The smartphone doesn’t have a mouse to let you push a pointer around the screen, so then, how do you control the interaction? The smartphone has a touch-sensitive screen which interprets movement of a finger (or fingers) on the screen. A whole new set of “gestures” or touch controls have been developed. Some of the new gestures are the “flick,” and the “pinch”. The flick is done with one finger and its quick movement indicates the intended operation, like turning a page. A pinch is done with two fingers and is typically used to enlarge or shrink something on the screen. Mostly, you use your finger to point to things that you want done. Another gesture or interaction is to “Select an Icon” for movement. To do this, you Touch and Hold the Icon. After holding it for a second or two, the App will be selected and you will receive feedback. On the Droid2, the feedback is called haptic feedback, which means you get a slight vibration on the touch-sensitive screen. On the iPhone, the icons on the page begin to wiggle.

Applications or Apps are what you use to get things done. Some common and very useful Apps are Contacts, Calendar, Places, Maps, Mail (Yahoo or Google), Notes, Time & Date, and Browser. There are also Apps for YouTube. Skype and Kindle. The Kindle App turns your smartphone into a reader that has access to the Kindle (Amazon) library of books, many of which are free.

There seems to be an App for almost anything that you would like to do with your smartphone. (If you don’t find an App for something you want to do with your phone, maybe you can invent one. There is always some software programmer willing to take on an interesting challenge.) In addition to Apps, there are a myriad of games available for the smartphone, many of which are free. For android devices, Apps and games are found at the Android Market. (iTunes is used by the iPhone.)

The Market is an App that comes with the phone. To get something from the Android Market, just touch the Market App Icon and you will immediately be at the front door of the Market. Here you can choose from Apps or Games or a selection that is presented on the opening screen. If you choose Apps, you can then choose to review all Apps or only the Free Apps. (The same is true for Games.) Once you find an App or game you are interested in you just touch it and if it is free, it will be downloaded to your smartphone. If there is a cost, you will have to set up an account so that your credit card can be charged. Most of the Apps that are not free are under $10.

All of the Apps on your smartphone are installed and available in an All Apps area, which slides out onto the current home screen. (Android devices have multiple homescreens.) On the Droid2 this area is accessed by pressing an Icon at the lower-center of the display screen.

So after you have decided how to use your home screens, you can put an App there by finding it in the All Apps area and then Touch and Hold the desired App icon. When the App is selected and ready to be placed, you will get feedback and the App will appear on the home screen that was below the All Apps area. Apps can be moved between home screens by Touch and Hold-ing the App and waiting for the feedback, then moving the App in the direction of the home screen that will be the new home screen for the App. On Android phones, an App can be deleted from a home screen, but not from the All Apps area, by Touch and Holding the Icon and then moving it to a red trash can that appears at the bottom center of the display.

When you want to use an App, you just touch it and it starts to perform. You will see the Icon spring into action, attempting to provide its functionality. Once started, other options may be available from a menu by touching the Menu button. (On the Droid2, the Menu is in the lower left, below the display screen). For example, if you touch a Contacts App, it will display your list of contacts. When you find the contact of interest, a touch will display all the information relating to that contact. Touching the Menu button gives you options to Delete or Edit the contact.

With all these Apps and a pretty small screen it would be nice to be able to organize your Apps; so, unlike most computers, the Droid2 has 7 home (display) screens, arranged horizontally. You expose another home screen by flicking your finger on the touch-sensitive home screen in the direction of the screen desired. For example if you are on home screen #4, the middle home screen, and you want to go to home screen #3, you would flick to the right. To go to home screen #5, you would flick to the left. Multiple home screens make it easy for you to organize your Apps. Apps that you think work together can be collected on a particular home screen. You could have a home screen for entertainment, one for work, one for family, another for sports. Any organization of Apps that makes sense to you would be appropriate.

This only scratches the surface of the features, interface techniques, and usefulness of a smartphone. Future articles will concentrate on some of the more interesting features, but I think you will now agree that:

Smartphone == PDA + (not so smart) phone.

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