> Original small screen iPhone, where it's easier to reach the top than the bottom…
With phones, it's always been easier to reach the bottom. This is why tab bars have always been at the bottom. This is why soft keyboards have always been at the bottom. This is why Apple moved Safari's controls to the bottom by default.
How are you holding your phone? I'm typing this comment one-handed using a soft keyboard on the bottom of my phone. My thumb actually cannot reach the top of the screen without shifting the phone to a different grip.
GP is not saying that the top is easier to reach than the bottom. Reaching to the very bottom of the display one-handed is still straining, compared to the Home button iPhones.
The comment mentions original iPhone screens. They were 3.5" and we hold phones differently because of the sub 4" displays.
The idea back then was maybe to separate the confirm action from other actions located at the bottom bar.
Human Interface Guidelines changed a lot as Apple changed the iPhone form factor. But with a 3.5", most of the screen is "uniformly" reachable and the bottom is slight less reachable as you usually need to flex the thumb.
Not to mention the lack of top and bottom bevels that we only still find on the iPhone SE (3rd gen) now.
Maybe I’m an outlier, but it’s been over a year and I still don’t like how in accessible the top and bottom of the screen on my 13 mini are for one handed use. I swipe to text one handed, but pressing the numbers its emoji button requires serious contortion and dexterity. Maybe the fact that I tend to use my left hand (despite being a righty) contributes to this.
I don't have a problem reaching the bottom of the screen, and also generally use my left hand for one-handed use. The phone rests on my pinky, with the middle three fingers supporting the body.
> With phones, it's always been easier to reach the bottom.
The _original_ iPhone is tiny by today's standards. It's 15% shorter than a current iPhone SE, with a relatively huge chin. At that point the top corner is where the thumb is when it's straight up.
Read the second section, labeled "Thumbs vs Touchscreens", which shows the sweet spot for accessing content via left or right thumb or both. The lower corner closest to the base of the thumb is hard to reach. Unless the user was using both thumbs, placing target UI in one of those corners would hurt one-handed users.
Also note which areas are labeled as HARD to reach for either/both thumbs - the location where GTK4 has placed the main buttons in the File Chooser dialog.
