Both Windows Phone 8 and iOS offer an in-built screen magnifier as part of their accessibility repotoire Both pretty much do exactly the same thing but Windows Phone 8 uses 2 fingers while iOS requires 3 but there are minor differences that might give one an edge over the other.iOS Zoom
iOS Zoom works by utilising a double tap with 3 fingers to activate/deactivate. From there you are free to utilise other gestures including a 3 finger flick (which dependant on the speed at which you do it will set the screen scrolling at a particular speed). This is aprticularly handy if you need to zoom in a fair bit and then find a corner of the screen. Unfortunately when you try to drag with 3 fingers you can sometimes set this off and find yourself nowhere near where you want to be (often requiring a Zoom out and Zoom In again to find where you are).
Using 3 fingers can be a bit inaccurate on a smaller device like the iPhone and this Zoom feature seems more at home on the iPad. It is quite easy to accidentally "press" a button while you are trying to activate/deactivate or utilise the Zoom. In terms of clarity the Zoom retains a high level of clear text/graphics even at its highest level of zoom.
The Windows Phone 8 Magnifier, once initiated, works in almost exactly the same way but utilises 2 fingers instead of 3. At first this does not "work" because you need to make sure you have your fingers slightly spread apart and it is easy to forget to do this (doing it with 3 extended middle fingers tends to spread them apart a litle bit by nature). But once you get your head around this little trick you will probably find it easier to use 2 as opposed to 3.
A 2 fingered flick has no effect so this gesture appears to be disabled. WHile I find this a little annoying it tends to work well for phones where small movements are necessary and/or you require much greater control over the position of the zoomed area.
Like the iOS Zoom feature you may also find yourself accidentally generating a "click" instead of 2 finger presses but after a little while and making sure my fingers were seperated I did not have this issue so much with Windows Phone 8.
Overall
Both are good and well implemented and I suspect whichever device you choose, you are likely to be happy with it after a little practise. For me, the Windows Phone 8 implementation is a slightly better approach for a small screen size (it is also available for Tablets) while I feel the iOS solution is a better approach for larger formats such as the iPad where further scrolling might be required.
Related Topics :
Activating the Screen Magnifier in iOS
Activating the Screen Magnifier in Windows Phone 8
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