On September 19th, 2012 Google released an update for their maps app for Android. The changelog reveals that they added two new features: the ability to access mobile and desktop search history (so you don't have to search an address on the desktop, and then reenter it on your mobile device), and a new "slide to zoom" feature.
Slide to zoom does the same thing as pinch to zoom but in a different way: the user taps the screen twice, holds the screen on the second tap, and then slides their finger along the screen to zoom in and out.
As useful as the unified search history is, slide to zoom may be far more interesting. Until now the standard way to zoom in or out of Android maps has been pinching to zoom.
As useful as pinch to zoom is, it has a glaring weakness: it's hard to impossible to do with one hand. This is especially problematic when driving; you shouldn't drive while zooming in on a smartphone app, but people will, we know this, so it's best they be able to do so easily with one hand, right?
That's probably the raison d'etre behind this feature, but my online colleague James Pakele had a lightbulb moment: what if Google implimented this feature system-wide and eventually used it to circumvent Apple's problematic pinch to zoom patents? Could it work?
I think it could... at least for smartphones and small tablets. If Google doesn't protect their investment in those areas of the market, the Android ecosystem could collapse like a house of cards.
Android has survived the patent wars globally, but the United States and Germany have been especially troublesome given their convoluted patent laws. Lose the United States, and the rest of the world may well follow. So, if it becomes necessary, Google will work around Apple's patents (an art at which they've become adept), including pinch to zoom. Slide to zoom may be the answer.
To be clear, slide to zoom doesn't replace pinch to zoom... yet. They coexist. If slide to zoom is ever to replace pinch to zoom, a gradual conversion effort makes more sense than "pulling the plug". Pinch to zoom is part of the lingua franca of mobile devices now, and it would take time for Google to shift users away from it.
Slide to zoom isn't quite as intuitive as pinch to zoom, and in its current form isn't as useful, either. Pinch to zoom lets you zoom in selectively on different parts of the screen, while slide to zoom only zooms on the center of the screen. That may make more sense when using a maps app with one hand, and there's no reason they can't change it to zoom on wherever you touched if they choose.
As to the intuitiveness, the right and left buttons on a Mouse aren't exactly intuitive either, but people learned to use them anyways. And slide to zoom is a lot more intuitive than a Mouse.
Android has time and market share for Google to shift people over to the new paradigm. Maybe they should, not only to weaken Apple's patent portfolio, but because being a leader is ultimately better for business than following.
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