Ah, the beautiful Windows Phone 7 tiled layout with its simplicity in buttons and ease of use. I can’t lie, Windows Phone 7s are now my jam.
All Windows Phone 7 devices come equip with three main buttons: Back Arrow, Windows and Search. (Seen below.) Each has a specific purpose but I’m finding I use certain buttons a disproportionate amount more than others. The Back Arrow, as I so affectionately call it, gets the user to and from apps; also, between web pages in IE and navigating within an app itself. The Windows is for bringing the user directly back to the live tile screen or the home screen. Search utilizes Microsoft’s Bing search engine for searching the web.
The percentage break down of usage is this:
Back Arrow: 85%
Windows: 5%
Search: 10%
If I were to put my button usage into a graph it’d look like this:
Or like this:
Or this one:
I could do more, but I think you get my point. And that point is Microsoft Word has too many graphing charts.
Maybe I’m using the OS wrong, which is entirely possible, but I’m spending 85% percent of my button time exiting and backing out of apps. The reason I do this is I don’t like leaving dozens of app instances open while I use my phone. Feeling it drains the battery, I prefer to take the time of backing out of everything than leave it all open.
How do you use your Windows Phone 7 buttons? Am I using it wrong? Let me know below.