A button would mean I'd answer endless calls by accident, in my pocket. No, sensors don't prevent this. Yes, my leg, through my pocket fabric, can push buttons.
Did you test all of this, before deciding a button is better?
That's honestly not a design issue.
The design of the following device was never criticized because answering a phone call was "too easy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310
Anyway, I've never said to use a button, I said "swiping is a terrible gesture"
My parents have enormous issues swiping to answer phone calls. So they answer by accident to a lot more calls than they did when the phone had buttons, because they answer while trying to hung up. It's not clear at all that they could not do anything and the call will automatically end after a while. It's not clear at all that they could silence that phone call, without silencing all phone calls.
It's even worse than that: most of the times they call me back because they could not swipe "the right way" and were unable to answer.
But they are not stupid, they've gone through life pretty well, they worked with precision instruments in health care, where people lives were at stake, it's the interface design that is stupid!
There was a time when things were designed to be used by people leveraging human natural abilities, not forced onto people because they look cool in ADS.
> Yes, my leg, through my pocket fabric, can push buttons on
Don't keep your phone in you front pocket then!
Anyway, I don't know how big you are, but the pockets of my jeans can't handle more than half a smartphone.
And previous generations of phone never activated on their own while in my pockets (yes, they could fit, because they were sized to be handhelds not small tablets)
But, more importantly, you're not considering more ergonomic gestures than swiping, like a long press.
You are assuming that your habits are the best possible implementation.
EDIT: there's also this: swiping can reveal physical characteristics of the user which could be considered not exactly a good thing, in this era of data harvesting and targetization.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107158191...
I'm not a native English speaker, sorry, big for me means big as per dictionary definition, not large or fat or "you should be ashamed of your body".
Anyway, a search for "jeans pockets smartphone" produces the following results, which is exactly what I meant, pants here have the same pocket size you can see in the following pictures.
https://previews.123rf.com/images/bacho12345/bacho123451508/...
https://previews.123rf.com/images/wisawa222/wisawa2221707/wi...
https://previews.123rf.com/images/aquapictures/aquapictures1...
https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_144...
I think looser pants are why ginormous phones fit, although I am sure upthread's comment about many pants being tailored differently now, is probably true too.
My own usage case is, as with anyone, unique. The real problem is, singular thought in design.
Look at chrome, and how google removed pinch zoom and reflow, to "force" websites to update for mobile.
Thanks google, clearly you could care less about older eyes. About older websites.
Stop mentally enslaving yourself.
ehehe I have grey hair and grey beard too.
I still wear jeans when nobody watches, but in all honesty when I wear classic suit pants to go to the office, the pockets are even smaller than the jeans ones, so my phone stays in the pocket of my (suit) jacket.
My issue with swiping is that when phones fitted entirely in one hand, for example the Samsung Galaxy SII or the iPhone 4, swiping made sense, everything was close enough and you never lost grip.
Now that they are so big, there's a lot of lateral movement to cover and it's becoming to be nonsensical. I usually drop my phone 2/3 times a day because of needing to swipe, it never happened so often before. I have also started to suffer from joint pain on my right thumb due to phone gestures.
I've watched my parents trying to do it with both hands - with one hand they keep the phone, with the other hand they try to swipe-up to answer using their index finger - and the movement 90% of the time falls too short and the swipe fails.
It's painful to watch, I think we should rethink gestures or phones' dimensions.
For kids, a kid sized phone would seemingly work better. 1/3 the size, weight, and theoretically with a smaller font and display.
Swiping should be used for low priority confirmations, like confirming you want to buy a subscription or pay for some in-game addon.
In my opinion it shouldn't be used to answer phone calls either.