One of my family members has only one hand, the left.
They would love to have a camera on hand to capture spontaneous moments around their young children.
But choosing a smartphone is a compromise between buying a low-level phone that is small enough to be operated with one hand, normally leaving you with a terrible camera, or one with a decent(-ish) camera that is a pain/impossible to use day to day due to the screen size.
BTW just using a camera on a smartphone with one hand is no joke; the trigger buttons generally assume a right-handed or two-handed hold. You can test this by operating your phone with your right hand held behind your back.
I'd love to see more UI designs that take into account that some people have non-standard configurations.
I'm a lefty, so I've probably adapted to this over the years, but I regularly use my phone's camera with one (left) hand. At least on Android (my recent phones were the pixel 3 & pixel), the shutter button is low and in middle.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it, opening the camera app and taking a picture all with my left hand is a pretty common task for me and not really any trouble at all.
I'm a street / documentary photographer so I have more experience than most, but I keep my iPhone 6S in my left pockets and operate it one-handed a lot of the time.
I have two hands, but also have tendonitis in my right thumb, so I've been training myself to use my phone left handed. The first thing I tried was a smaller phone, but I'm also old and my eyes suck. Now I'm on a large phone (Note 8), and I'm not going back. The trick was to get a phone with (a) one-handed mode (entire UI shrinks to left side of screen), (b) a floating camera button (that I can position anywhere on the screen), and (c) a Lovehandle, or similar accessory, so I can confidently hold my phone in my left hand. Just some things to consider for your relative's needs.
I have a PopSocket on the back of my iPhone 11 and routinely use the camera with it one handed. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine using a phone of this size without the PopSocket.
Couple options using an iPhone:
1- Enable Accessibility> Voice control.
Then you can do it all with your voice:
- Say `open camera`, then
- `Show numbers`, then say
- `9` to take photo.
2- Open camera app,
then use the `Volume Up` button to take photos.
I have a Sony Xperia (something ZXZXZXXZ232...) Compact.
The CPU etc is in league with the large phones, but it's small. A double press of the power button opens the camera, and there's a physical shutter button on the side of the phone.
They would love to have a camera on hand to capture spontaneous moments around their young children. But choosing a smartphone is a compromise between buying a low-level phone that is small enough to be operated with one hand, normally leaving you with a terrible camera, or one with a decent(-ish) camera that is a pain/impossible to use day to day due to the screen size.
BTW just using a camera on a smartphone with one hand is no joke; the trigger buttons generally assume a right-handed or two-handed hold. You can test this by operating your phone with your right hand held behind your back.
I'd love to see more UI designs that take into account that some people have non-standard configurations.