This simple device solves one of the iPhone's most annoying usability issues – the fact that you've got to reach all the way up to the top left corner to go back in most menus. The Halo Back is effectively a screen protector for your iPhone that adds a back button just beside your home button, and it's already been funded more than six times over on Kickstarter.
Apple's recent iPhones may have finally caught up to Samsung's handsets in terms of screen size, but the iOS operating system is still built around the same philosophy that prevailed when Steve Jobs was going around fervently preaching that 3.5 inches was the perfect phone screen size.
One of the ways this manifests is that there's no permanent back button down at the bottom of the handset. So if you want to use it with one hand, you've got to get your thumb all the way up to the top left of the screen to go back in most applications, meaning you can either get yourself a Thanko thumb extender, or fit one of these.
That simple usability issue makes this a brilliant and cheap solution. For US$12, Halo Back will send you a "smart" screen protector that adds a back button to the left of the home button on an iPhone 6 or 6+.
The design is simple. The Halo Back has a small capacitative sensor that reads when you touch where the back button should be, and then transfers that touch to the top left of the screen. It doesn't change anything else on your phone, and anywhere you touch on the regular screen it will operate as normal, but if you press to the left of your home button you'll go back in whatever menu structure you're in.
And demand is clearly there. With 16 days remaining on its Kickstarter campaign, Halo Back has already got more than 4,300 backers and has reached its $20,000 goal more than six times over.
If all goes as planned, the team expects to begin deliveries in August 2015.
Source: Halo Back
