Spotted: Upright or sideways? analysis of smartphone postures in the wild

Phone orientation as a function of app. 

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 // published on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services-Latest Proceeding Volume // visit site

Upright or sideways?: analysis of smartphone postures in the wild
Alireza Sahami Shirazi, Niels Henze, Tilman Dingler, Kai Kunze, Albrecht Schmidt

In this paper, we investigate how smartphone applications, in particular web browsers, are used on mobile phones. Using a publicly available widget for smart phones, we recorded app usage and the phones' acceleration and orientation from 1,330 devices. Combining app usage and sensor data we derive the device's typical posture while different apps are used. Analyzing motion data shows that devices are moved more while messaging and navigation apps are used as opposed to browser and other common applications. The time distribution between landscape and portrait depicts that most of the landscape mode time is used for burst interaction (e.g., text entry), except for Media apps, which are mostly used in landscape mode.