Please allow us to use the iPhone’s Home button to answer calls.
I know it doesn’t get that cold in Cupertino, but it sure gets cold in many other parts of the world. In colder climates, the iPhone becomes almost completely unusable for its primary function — a phone — as soon as you put a pair of gloves on. If you don’t have iPhone-compatible headphones on when a call comes in, you have to fish the phone out of your pocket, take off one of your gloves, then “swipe to answer.”
I’ve missed calls doing this. I’ve seen people drop their iPhones doing this. I’ve even seen someone use their (probably runny) nose to swipe on a particularly cold day.
The most frustrating thing about this problem is that there’s an easy fix: the Home button.
The Home button is already multi-talented, but it does nothing when a call is coming in. If you enabled the option to push the home button to answer (or push and hold for one second if you were worried about accidental presses), there would be no need for me to take off my gloves. Sure, I’d still need to use my uncovered fingers for dialing, but I can plan when to dial — and plan to be in a warm place. I don’t have that luxury when it comes to incoming calls.
I love my iPhone, but this one thing is incredibly frustrating for a good chunk of the year here in the Northeast.
Winter is coming. Please don’t force me to use my nose to answer the phone.
Adam Weiss
I submitted this idea to Apple’s iPhone Feedback Page. If you agree with me, please do the same. Feel free to copy and paste from my post if you’d like. I just want this to get fixed.