Apple drastically changed a feature on the iPhone X that 55% of people say they use (AAPL)

pulse

September 18, 2017 8:51 PM

Reachability helps you use your iPhone with one hand, but it's trickier to use on the iPhone X.

When it was revealed that the iPhone X didn't have a home button, there was some panic.

What would happen to the fingerprint scanner? How would you navigate back to the home screen if you got confused? And what about "reachability"?

Reachability was introduced three years ago with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple's first larger-screen devices. Up until now, the feature has let you navigate the larger display with one hand by tapping on the home button twice. Then, the screen is pulled halfway down the screen so you can reach everything using just your thumb.

AppleInsider points out

When the bigger screen came out, however, Apple needed an easy way to let people continue using the phone with one hand. Thus, reachability was born.

While it may seem niche, the feature is popular — 76% of millennial iPhone users take advantage of reachability, according to comScore's "2017 US Mobile App Report," which gathers data about smartphone app use among US adults.

The feature isn't as widely used among older iPhone users. The study found that 39% of those ages 35-54 used reachability, while 32% of those ages 55 and up used it.

On average, though, 55% of those surveyed by comScore said they used reachability.

The good news is, reachability didn't disappear altogether with the iPhone X — but it is vastly different.

The X's design differs from previous iPhones because Apple mostly eliminated the bezels, or edges around the screen. Since its face is almost entirely the 5.8-inch screen, the phone is smaller than Apple's Plus models and likelier to support one-handed use.

If you're not sold on the iPhone X, Apple's other new phones — the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus — have home buttons, which means they still have "classic" reachability. And if you miss the smaller design of Apple's older phones, you can still buy the iPhone SE, a $350 phone that looks like an iPhone 5S and runs like an iPhone 6S.

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