List scrolling/touchscreen "pause"

[Guest withoutwings]

I'm noticing something which (IMHO) is detracting from the overall "snappiness" feel of the device at best, and is downright annoying at worst...

Basically there appears to be a delay when scrolling a list which means it won't start moving until your finger has gone a certain distance, then it does a jerky movement to catch up. It also appears to want to wait until the list is perfectly still again before you can click on an item, or it may ignore your click.

This has the following bad side-effects:

• Scrolling is jerky initially until it catches up with your finger placement
  
• The list doesn't always catch up to where it should be, leaving it slightly behind where you started touching the list
  
• Sometimes a quick flick may be interpreted as a click
  
• The list kinetic scrolling is slower than you intended with a fast flick
  
• Clicks are sometimes ignored if done too quickly or list hasn't quite finished moving
  

A good way of demonstrating this issue is by using the XDA app, and in a forum or thread with many entries you can press anywhere and *very* slowly move your finger up or down. Then without lifting your finger, pause until the scrollbar disappears, then slowly move again. You will see that it won't move for the first few mm of your finger's movement but then "jumps" to catch up once you've moved your finger far enough.

So has anyone else noticed this, or been bothered by it? I have only owned a HTC Hero before this device, and despite being underpowered it would always track my finger movements or clicks 100% perfectly.

Paul - is there anything you can do as part of your "audit" to improve this?

Cheers

Edited April 5, 2011 by withoutwings

[Guest Paul]

Hmmm, i'll look into it too! :D

P

[Guest withoutwings]

Thanks mate - let me know if you need me to try out any test patches for it! :D

[Guest thedicemaster]

not responding to clicks while scrolling is a good thing.

while scrolling tapping once stops the scrolling, that's useful because if you scroll too fast it's hard to aim and you might hit the wrong item in the list.

just tap twice, that shouldn't be too big of a problem.

[Guest moonie17]

An issue that im having is sometimes when i got back to the homescreen and try to go to the left or right screen it doesnt seem to work on first attempt, i have to take my finger off and try again?

[Guest withoutwings]

not responding to clicks while scrolling is a good thing.

while scrolling tapping once stops the scrolling, that's useful because if you scroll too fast it's hard to aim and you might hit the wrong item in the list.

just tap twice, that shouldn't be too big of a problem.

But on a list, I would never think to click to stop it - a click should always be to select something. Ok perhaps a very fast scrolling list is not desirable to be clicked, but the user would soon learn not to do that! A press-and-hold (grab again) action is what I normally do to stop a kinetic list moving, and in that case I agree that it shouldn't do the normal press-and-hold behaviour (ie. popup-menu) but instead stop the list and/or wait for more movement.

However it's the jerky delay (or "lag" if you like) when first moving a list that annoys me more, because that delay means that you cannot do very quick, precise movements. And just makes the user experience feel less smooth, for me.