With the Droid X, your fingers do the walking. They do all the work that you do on a computer with a mouse or keyboard. Here are the eight finger strokes you can use on the Droid X’s screen.
Tapping is as basic to the Droid X as clicking is to a mouse. This one simple gesture is how you press onscreen buttons, place the cursor for text entry, and choose from menus. Note that’s a finger tap; the screen is designed to detect a fleshy fingertip, not a stylus.
Touch an object and hold it for several seconds, and depending on what you’re holding, an option menu may appear. (For example, when you touch and hold the Home screen, a menu appears that lets you add an object such as a widget, change your wallpaper, and so on.) You also touch and hold an object as a way to grab onto it if you then want to drag the object somewhere.
After you’ve grabbed something, you can drag it with your finger, such as dragging an icon to the Trash.
Slide your finger across the screen to perform some specific tasks, such as unlocking your phone after it’s been put into Sleep mode, or to answer a phone call on a locked Droid X. You’ll also use the sliding motion to move through all six of the Home screen’s panes.
Think of the flick as a faster slide, done vertically when scrolling through a list, such as a list of your contacts. The faster you make the flicking motion, the faster your screen scrolls—sometimes too fast. You can stop the motion, though, by touching the screen again.
Note
Flicks seem to actually obey the laws of physics, or at least as much as virtual movement can. When you flick a list, it starts off scrolling very quickly, and then gradually slows down, as if it were a ball set in motion that gradually loses momentum.
To scroll through large lists quickly, you can flick multiple times.
In many apps, such as Google Maps, Mail, the Web, and Photos, you can zoom in by spreading your fingers—placing your thumb and forefinger on the screen and spreading them. The amount you spread your fingers will determine the amount you zoom in.
To zoom out, put your thumb and forefinger on the screen and pinch them together. The more you pinch, the more you zoom out.
When you’re viewing a map such as Google Maps, or a picture, or you’re on a web page, you can zoom in by double-tapping. In some instances, when you’ve reached the limit of zooming in, when you double-tap again, you restore the zoom to its original size.
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