How many clicks does it take?

One thing that many people look for in a phone is how efficient they can be with it. Businessmen as well as other busy individuals want to be able to do whatever the task may be with the fewest amount of clicks. Most likely these individuals will be using other apps off the respective app store the majority of their time, but when it comes to pre-installed tasks (such as connecting to a wifi network or changing your passcode), they would still like to be as efficient as possible.

Connecting to wireless internet can be a frustrating task sometimes, either the phone just doesn't want to connect or some other miscellaneous error occurs. For this test I will be timing how long it takes for me to get from home screen of the phone to the proper location (such as the wifi access screen), and then time how long the phone takes to connect to JCU's guest wifi (network was forgotten prior to each trial on each phone).

Here are the results of the test (each test was preformed 3 times then averaged):

Home screen -> wifi screen (time and number of clicks) :
Apple phone: Time: ~1.2 seconds      Clicks: 2
Android phone: Time: ~2.3 seconds      Clicks: 4
Windows phone: Time: ~2.6 seconds      Clicks: 4

Wifi screen -> actually connected to the wifi:
Apple phone: ~4.1 seconds
Android phone: ~4.7 seconds
Windows phone :  ~ 4.9 seconds

An interesting thing I noticed while conducting these tests is that on each of the three phones under the setting tab, Wireless networks were within the top two options of the given list.

 



This goes to show the the developers did a good job in placing the settings where they are within the phone, by having the most used features on the top of the list and the least used closer to the bottom, it allows for people to become more efficient.

Based on the results above we can see that all the times were too close to call for a clear winner, since the times were so small they could of a large degree of error due to human error(not being quick enough to stop the timer). However, the iPhone offers the fewest amount of clicks so be default it should be the winner.

I will run a few more test right now too so that we can see how long it takes to do other tasks on the phone.

Home screen -> system updates (phone updates screen) (time and number of clicks) :
Apple phone: Time: ~2.3 seconds      Clicks: 3
Android phone: Time: ~2.7 seconds      Clicks: 4
Windows phone: Time: ~2.7 seconds      Clicks: 3

For this test we can see it was a close race again.

Messaging applications -> typing a sentence (time and number of clicks) :
For this test I will be navigating to the texting apps and typing a small 25 word paragraph. This is to test how smoothly the keyboard works and how quickly the phones react to my touches.
Apple phone: Time: ~20 seconds    
Android phone: Time: ~23 seconds    
Windows phone: Time: ~28 seconds  

Windows:                                 Android:                               Apple:

 


Clearly we can see a noticeable difference in the time it took to type the same paragraph. For each trial I went as fast as I could. As we can see from above all the keyboards are the relatively the same layout, which allowed myself to type effectively on each one. The main problem for me was the size of each keyboard however. Since the Windows phone and Android phone have smaller displays, it also causes the keyboard to be smaller by default too. The smallness of the keyboards are what really slowed me down compared to the Apple phone. So if you are one who is constantly always typing then the iPhone may be better for you.