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Comment by kwhitefoot | Hacker News Reader

> best reachable areas are the top and the left.

Which makes it pretty much impossible to use _in_ your right hand while manipulating UI elements with your thumb.

On a 4" phone, it’s perfectly possible.

I have relatively small hands, but here’s a few photos: https://imgur.com/a/YIRAj – 100% of the screen is reachable, and on all below 4.9" also with a firm grip.

In contrast, on the 5.2" Nexus 5X, only with a loose grip is the left or upper part reachable, and the action bar’s up button is generally unreachable while holding the phone in a firm grip.

On larger devices, such as the Nexus 6P (currently none here, so I can’t take photos), it gets far worse.

Phone UI is designed for 4-5" devices, if you use larger, you have to live with that, but that’s your decision.

Yes. Phones that are switched off are easily reachable almost anywhere.

They also happen to have no active UI elements on the screen. Or visual feedback.If you'd switch it on, on that photo you you'd be long-pressing the (bottom-right) "back" key, and possibly generating word salad in any focused text input field.

Almost nobody has issues holding a phone with the active display switched off.

I can also hold them for you while switched on without issue. I photographed them switched off because it was faster to do it this way, as otherwise I’d first have to power them on and set them up.

But notice the Moto G (2014) in the album, which is on, and doesn’t show interference.

Or,look at this helpful graphic Scott Hurf made http://scotthurff.com/images/posts/thumb-zone-2/thumb-zones-...

Your hands are not that small. My hands are not that small, and they're smaller than yours.

I'm a woman with about average or small hands compared to my friends and colleagues, so compared to the average man hand, they should be quite small.

I'm a man whose hands are about 1/8" shorter than the average, and with your 5" phone, you're able to hit more with your tight grip than I can hit with my loose grip. With my loose grip, I can only comfortably hit about 1/4 of the screen. Maybe it has to do with the relative size of the palm to the fingers. It's actually one of the reasons that I'm a fan of big bezels on the top and bottom - it gives me something to grip if I need to use the top or bottom of the screen.

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