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Comment by rokhayakebe | Hacker News Reader

If my cellphone only had one button it certainly would be simple, but, umm, all I could do would be to turn it on or off.

Not really. It could be voice enabled. Press the key, Say New Number, Say Name, Say Digits, Say Save. Press the key, Say Call XYZ.

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Actually my phone only has one button and it is still one of the most capable phones ever made. In fact, I'm writing this on my phone with a single button.

but it probably has a touch screen, making it possible to display lot of buttons at the same time.

one physical button != one button

I'm impressed and unimpressed with the iPhone. There are a number of neat things in the touch interfaces. However the lack of menus is very limiting at times. Tertiary functionality is subsequently missing or obscure.

Using morse code, perhaps? With only one button, there isn't really any other way to write (I presume that if you were using speech recognition, you would have said "saying" or "speaking," not "writing").

(Yes, I know that you meant you're using a touchscreen on an iPhone, or something similar. I'm trying to be vaguely humorous, and probably failing.)

(The 3GS, according to wikipedia, has 5 physical buttons and then the touchscreen. The iPhone 4, from the pictures I've seen, has at least 4, and the touchscreen. The fact that people entirely forget about them suggests that the design is extremely good, if people are using them without realizing it, or quite bad, if people aren't using them or realizing that they exist. I am inclined to lean towards the former.)

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