Most iPhone users who care about design would agree that iOS has many design flaws. From huge Volume HUD to obnoxious irregularities in UI, there’s a lot that Apple needs to work on. One ugly UI element in particular has been annoying for users for many years. If you haven’t guessed already, yes we are talking about the big Personal Hotspot bar that appears over the status bar, even exceeding its height by more than double.
Apple has solved the ‘ugly bar’ issue in devices like iPhone X that display a blue background around the time or red background in case of screen recording. Apple’s design team has also fixed the issue for non-X models of iPhone when it comes to screen recording as instead of displaying the thick red bar that exceeds the boundaries of the status bar, iOS only makes status bar red.
Despite all these changes problem still exists for the Personal Hotspot feature, as except iPhone X all other iPhones display the wide and ugly looking blue bar. The blue bar not only looks bad but it also affects the user experience as many apps, including Apple’s very own stock apps like the Watch application don’t work well when this particular bar is visible.
The solution? As mentioned earlier in the article, Apple has already solved this issue for screen recording where iOS only makes the current status bar red. Apple could implement the same solution for Personal Hotspot’s blue indicator and limit it to the size of status bar.
Or Apple could truly improve the user experience by adding iPhone X inspired blue and red time backgrounds for both Personal Hotspot and Screen Recording features. This will not only improve iOS design wise but it will also bring a uniform design to all iPhones.
iOS 12 is currently in developer and public beta and will be releasing for everyone in the fall. Since the software update focuses on improving performance and solving existing problems, we hope Apple would include the Personal Hotspot solution and make it part of the update.
