Core77

The new lock screen seems pretty easy to use in my opinion. Your proposal is bad, but it does seem more time consuming. As it is now, all you have to do is slide to unlock, or tap to have your camera.

Worse. The horizontal slide action implies that it's unlocking the phone, so I can understand why Apple would want to keep that sacred to the unlock slider.

Sliding the entire screen up and away to reveal the photo interface suggests and entirely different behavior. You're not unlocking anything, you're merely revealing the camera.

It offers more immediate gratification (very important in the "I need to whip my camera out as quickly as possible or risk missing this moment" case) and doesn't create the mental conflict that "sliding horizontally across the bottom of the screen unlocks my phone."

Brilliant!

Might be worth pointing out that this already exists on Android as an option...

Brad Woodard: the camera icon now requires you to press and slide up to access the camera. Dumb, I know.

I really like the new behavior. You don't need to slide the camera to the top of the screen - a quick flick is all it takes. Super fast.

I do agree its not the prettiest design but the functionality is great.

I don't like your proposal. In fact its counter intuitive.

You should propose this to Android as I want their users to have to think which button everytime they revisit their phones.

I do NOT want to have to press a button first before having the slider, or have to decide in moment of spontaneity when I get my phone to have to DECIDE which to press either for a camera button or slide to open.

It will confuse the user every time for a brief second or less, but that is all it takes to make it very UN Apple design.

The new Apple introduction of slide up is genius. Its super intuitive and fast and think it is the perfect solution in improving the previous UI of the Camera on the main screen.

nice, or you could get a WP7 phone :P
Dedicated camera button means you can hold it down and be ready to shoot in ~2-3 seconds. (don't believe me? check out Smoked by Windows Phone)

To the comment above, you are "unlocking" the phone it's just this time to the camera application. I really like Brye's solution and think that it's great to show that Apple's way is not always the best way, it's just one way.

This does not solve anything, but perhaps providing symmetry to the interface. Usability though, is degraded as the unlock and camera functions are given the same weight. They are two completely different actions, and should be treated as such. The current 5.1 implementation is perfect in my view. No more double-pressing of the home screen... you just slide the view up. Simple and quick.

Adding a press-and-hold to both the lock and camera buttons here would increase time-to-action in both cases, dramatically increasing wait time for device usage.

I think this design is actually worse. It now requires 2 actions instead of the 1 to get to the camera. Additionally, I think Apple did a great job of working out the motion of the slide to access the camera. A slight nudge and it slides right up. The secondary benefit is now the slide is shorter making unlock easier. They nailed it.

Hey everyone, thanks for all the responses! I never would have thought this project would have caught on like this! It's great to hear all this feedback, and to know that this subject was on others minds! To clear some things up, you do not have to long press or tap the icons to bring up the slider. Pressing your finger on the icon will instantly bring up the slider, and from there you slide. One simple motion just like the original. Sorry, my wording probably caused a bit of confusion!

So basically it's an android unlock screen. lulz.

http://www.theunwired.net/media/news/motorola_milestone_android_2.0.1_lock-screen.jpg

It's a seductively simple approach, but from a interaction design point of view it's actually pretty weak. The fact that you're sliding in opposite directions on the current iphone is both 1. to avoid accidental actuation and 2. to signify that the outcome of your action is completely different.

Not to mention that with this design you don't know what to do by looking at it, because there's no affordance like the sliding tray and the arrow on each icon. Am I supposed to tap, tap and hold or to slide?

Use your phone? Slider to the right. Need your cam? Rotate your iPhone horizontally, volume buttons up. You use the volume UP to snap a picture, not? Slider to the right again. That's the logic Apple implemented. No changes required really.

Congratulations. You've invented Android's S2U solution for the same problem. As an ICS user I think it's awesome although I don't take pictures often enough. Because of that I've always unlocked it the regular way and press the camera icon on the homescreen before I remember I could have done it quicker.