Electronic devices, such as portable electronic devices, have gained worldwide popularity due to their broad applications. Portable electronic devices may include, for example, smartphones, wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablets, laptop computers with wireless or Bluetooth® capabilities, cellular telephones, etc. A user may use, for example, a smartphone to perform a variety of functions including making telephone calls, sending electronic messages, taking photos, reading articles, and other functions, by installing applications.
With the increasing number of applications, users tend to install more and more applications on their portable electronic devices. At the same time, users have started reading articles and/or news on their portable electronic devices. To accommodate users' various usages, manufacturers have brought into the market portable electronic devices that have relatively large touchscreens to enable rendering of more icons and contents. This, however, gives rise to problems for users who operate portable electronic devices by using one hand. For example, if a user operates a portable electronic device by one hand, and touches the touchscreen of the portable electronic device with a thumb, the thumb of the user may not reach icons that are located far from the thumb location on the touchscreen. In this case, the user may need to instead use both hands to operate the portable electronic device via the touchscreen.
To solve this problem, existing technologies relating to Human-Computer Interaction may provide a settings menu, by which a user sets his/her hand use preference. For example, if a user prefers to use both hands to operate a touchscreen, the user can set a corresponding preference on the settings menu.
However, the existing technologies are not only complicated but also require presetting. Situations may arise in which a user has a need to use both hands, even though the user usually uses one hand to operate a portable electronic device. As an example, when the user is reading an article on the portable electronic device while being a passenger in a vehicle, the user may need to use both hands to avoid shaking or dropping the portable electronic device. Due to this need, the user may not have time to preset a user preference to use both hands. As a result, a user may drop a portable electronic device while only one hand is being used to hold the portable electronic device.