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Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

I was recently at a party when one person asked someone to take a photo with their phone. They were the only ones there with an Android phone. Not a one of the rest of us could figure out how to do it quickly. The stress of needing to be quick might have also played a part. I’m sure I could figure it out without the pressure, but in the moment, it was impossible to figure out what button did what.

I think someone just took a picture with their own iPhone and sent it via email.

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By the same token, if you don't own an iPhone there's no way you'll find "Swipe over on the lock screen to quickly access the camera" because there's no visible indication that it exists.

Nor would you know that swiping down from the battery meter might give you a camera shortcut, or that pulling down on the home screen icons gives you the search box.

So you'd probably be hunting through the home screen icons on a borrowed phone to find where they put the camera app.

I don't know... my lock screen has a camera icon always visible. When you tap it, you get an isolated camera mode that only shows you photos taken in that session. That's the standard screen now, so I think Apple is doing okay on the discoverability front (for that specific use-case -- possibly the only case where something is discoverable in iOS).

But I still don't know how to take a picture on an Android phone. I have no idea what the Android virtual buttons mean or what they do at all. With similar logic, my wife still has an iPhone with a physical home button because she doesn't like my (now old) iPhone with the "swipe up" home motion. She doesn't really want to learn how to use a new (ish) gesture.

And while I'm on a roll... I also don't understand the buttons on Playstation controllers, preferring the direct lettering of the Xbox or Switch.

We are all ultimately creatures of habit.

> my lock screen has a camera icon always visible. When you tap it, you get an isolated camera mode that only shows you photos taken in that session. That's the standard screen now, so I think Apple is doing okay on the discoverability front (for that specific use-case -- possibly the only case where something is discoverable in iOS).

Huge discoverability hiccup with that camera button on the lock screen: you have to tap and hold the camera button to get into the camera (not long, about 1 second). The first time I picked up my partner's iPhone to take a picture for her, I just about pulled my hair out trying to get that button to do anything. I tapped it about a thousand times before she got frustrated and showed me how to operate it.

It's to prevent the phone accidentally unlocking. But your experience does highlight a big problem. They should show a message when you "frustrate" tap explaining what you should do.

With android it varies. Samsung has a camera icon on the lock screen by default that you just use, so that is very easy to figure out.

By default, quickly doubletapping the power button also opens the camera, screen on or not.

Gesture navigation is also better on Android, but this is probably because iOS never had a back button.

> my lock screen has a camera icon always visible. When you tap it, you get an isolated camera mode

Maybe they screwed this up on home-button iPhone models but got it right on the X and newer?

Here's my lock screen: https://i.imgur.com/tyOYZXW.png

I don't see anything resembling a camera icon that I could tap. I can swipe sideways to get to the limited-session camera, but only because I happen to know that shortcut exists.

It's not as if the 4" SE is too small to fit a camera button on the screen, but there isn't one. Unless I turned the button off and forgot about it, but I can't imagine Apple offering that sort of UI customization.

It's almost invisible against your background photo, but at the very bottom, there are a bunch of dots just like on the home screen, except the rightmost dot is a camera icon. It's not a button you can tap, it's an indicator of what is on the page to the right. It's the same on my 7. World's most subtle indicator.

> By the same token, if you don't own an iPhone there's no way you'll find "Swipe over on the lock screen to quickly access the camera" because there's no visible indication that it exists

There is though: that side (right) of the lock screen has a tiny camera icon at the bottom on iOS. You can long press that icon directly and open the camera, but it also sort of teaches you that sliding is quicker. (Though it's not entirely consistent because the icon on the other side, for quick access to "flashlight", doesn't help teach you that sliding that side opens the "Today" widget screen.)

My lockscreen on Android also has a camera icon, and when I tap it it says "swipe icon for camera"

At least it educates the user.

Am I missing something? I don't have a button for the camera or for the flashlight.

https://i.imgur.com/tyOYZXW.png

It's not for lack of space on the screen, but maybe Apple got lazy with designing for older phones and just deleted it. Once upon a time I think the camera was indicated better.

Apple makes things insanely opaque at times too: I hate to admit it, but I cursed Apple for years for removing the search function from iOS (which used to be predictably located in the left-of-home desktop/icon pane). It was literally several years after the change before I accidentally swiped down from the middle of the home screen (who the hell thought that was a reasonable control?) and discovered that search wasn't gone, it was just so well-hidden that it took years to accidentally stumble across it. (This wasn't helped by Apple's opinionated approach to UI design, which led me to believe that in their minds, removing search functionality was exactly in line with Ives, et al's then-new "flat" design philosophy of form trumping function. FWIW, finding text on a web page in Safari is another UI abortion...)

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