Why are phone keypads upside down compared to computers?

[fbwinston]

Sitting at my desk pondering life, I've noticed the difference. I've even checked on my phone and the calculator keypad is the other way up to the phone keypad. I seem to use both ok, so I guess muscle memory is helping.

Is there a technical reason for this?

[somouk]

My understanding was the keyboard number pad is laid out as the calculator layout to help people move from calculators to computers and entering numbers at pace.

Phone keypad is likely a carry over from how someone designed it years ago when they went to digital input phones and it has stuck.

[Xerstead]

Touch screen scrolling and laptop touchpad scrolling are flipped too.
On a touchscreen, moving your finger down pulls the page down so you see the top. Trying to use a friend's laptop with touchpad and pulling your finger down pulls the scroll bar down and the page moves up.

[JimbobVFR]

Xerstead said:

Touch screen scrolling and laptop touchpad scrolling are flipped too.
On a touchscreen, moving your finger down pulls the page down so you see the top. Trying to use a friend's laptop with touchpad and pulling your finger down pulls the scroll bar down and the page moves up.

It's the other way round on a Mac touchpad and matches the action of using a phone screen. Weirdly when I switched to a MacBook I barely noticed and it became second nature very quickly but switching back to a Windows laptop was much harder even after being a windows user for far longer.

It's dead easy to change scrolling direction on a Mac (untick the option for scroll direction: natural in the settings) but unfortunately not easy to change on a PC

[phil4]

Xerstead said:

Touch screen scrolling and laptop touchpad scrolling are flipped too.
On a touchscreen, moving your finger down pulls the page down so you see the top. Trying to use a friend's laptop with touchpad and pulling your finger down pulls the scroll bar down and the page moves up.

Mac vs PC scroll wheel on the mouse did that too... one of the two quirks that always annoyed me.

[geeks]

JimbobVFR said:

Xerstead said:

Touch screen scrolling and laptop touchpad scrolling are flipped too.
On a touchscreen, moving your finger down pulls the page down so you see the top. Trying to use a friend's laptop with touchpad and pulling your finger down pulls the scroll bar down and the page moves up.

It's the other way round on a Mac touchpad and matches the action of using a phone screen. Weirdly when I switched to a MacBook I barely noticed and it became second nature very quickly but switching back to a Windows laptop was much harder even after being a windows user for far longer.

It's dead easy to change scrolling direction on a Mac (untick the option for scroll direction: natural in the settings) but unfortunately not easy to change on a PC

My Windows laptop touchpad scrolls the same way as my Mac and my Phone.....