A while back I wrote about two features that are often overlooked in smartphones: a notification LED and profiles. But those features are not brand new, they are “out there” and ready to be used. What I am proposing here has not been implemented yet in any touchscreen phone (to my knowledge at least).
1. A way to easisly scroll a webpage by a full page (i.e. pageup/down). Currently, the constant dragging of the page is tedious and unnecesarily fatigues the eyes by forcing you to track how much you drag the page. This functionality could easily be implemented by either some gesture, or better still, to allow for a remapping of the volume keys so that they could [optionally] provide this functionality within the browser only.
2. The ability to add shortcuts to the multitasking screen. If you look at the multitasking screen in both Android and iOS you’ll notice that there is a lot of empty, unused space there. But that space could be put to excellent use if you were able to define app-shortcuts in that empty space; that would be an easy, and intuitive, way to significantly boost the number of “one-click-away”-apps, beyond the four permanent apps at the bottom of the home screen.
Both these ideas would greatly increase the usability; will we ever see them in our smartphones?
Opera Mini and Mobile both support the page up and down on my Nokia e71. I really agree that this is a brilliant feature.
Yep, I know what you mean – I had it on my E72 in the regular Opera browser, by clicking the 2/8 keys for up/down, respectively.
It’s really useful feature and something you miss as soon you move to a touch screen phone, but I have yet to see it implemented in any touch screen phone.
And that’s why smartphones should always come with a full keyboard
Opera Mobile on the Nokia E7 is perfect for web surfing. You can swipe the screen if you want or just press 2 for page up, 8 for page down. It would be absolutely perfect if it didn’t have the slightly annoying animation when changing pages.