Apple’s attention to detail, from both a hardware and software perspective, is arguably unrivaled. More than most companies, Apple sweats the small stuff in the broader interest of improving the overall user experience. Every so often, however, the company introduces out a questionable design decision that leaves people scratching their heads. For example, a post gaining traction on Twitter highlights a quirky iPhone design that many people have complained about for years.
As anyone with an iPhone can attest, handling an incoming call when you’re already on a call isn’t exactly straightforward. As a seasoned iPhone user for more than a decade now, I still struggle to get my iPhone to do what I want it to do when a second call comes through.
The current iPhone design for an incoming call
If you’re on a call and a new call comes in, users are presented with three options. They can either decline the incoming call, end the current call and start a conversation with the new caller, or put the first call on hold while they take the second.
In theory, this seems easy enough. In practice, there is much to be desired. For whatever reason, the options Apple provides don’t work as designed. From my personal experience, whenever I put a call on hold and take the new call, there’s always some glitch returning to the first. More often than not, I end up ending both calls.
The tweet about the bad iPhone design that got this conversation started can be viewed below.
most garbage design ever made pic.twitter.com/9ccqcmKju8
— jame (@videojame_) July 7, 2021
The tweet has garnered over 325,000 likes and nearly 26,000 retweets. Clearly, this is a frustrating problem many people have encountered.
Is there a solution?
Is there a solution to this pesky iPhone design problem? Well, one Twitter user named Yanky Perl came up with two ideas that are worth sharing.
Exploring another idea, to showcase the relationship btwn the two calls that gives more clarity of how a user can proceed before the second call goes to voicemail. pic.twitter.com/J9mJXeHo7s
— Yanky Perl (@YankyPerl) July 9, 2021
Both of these seem a tad more straightforward than Apple’s current implementation.
Thankfully, this is just one rare example of an iPhone design gone awry. More often than not, Apple’s design choices for iOS are far more intuitive and elegant than what one finds on the Android side.
