Sprint Mogul: Button placement issues

My old phone (the Sprint PPC6700 - a catchy name!) died recently, and Sprint was courteous enough to replace it with the new version, the Sprint Mogul. Here are the two phones for comparison (the PPC6700 is on the left and the Mogul is on the right).

The Mogul is a great phone. It runs Windows Mobile 6, which is significantly less prone to crashes than Windows Mobile 5. It’s slightly thinner and much lighter, making the phone actually bearable to carry around. Another nice feature of the Mogul is the inclusion of a scroll wheel, which lets you scroll through lists simply by rolling the wheel. In order to make a selection, you press down on the wheel. Handy.

Well, almost handy. The scroll wheel is on the left side of the device and on the right side, nearly at the exact same height, is the power switch. Now, when you’re using the device one-handed, you can’t really just press one button. You have to effectively pinch the phone. When I pinch the phone using my middle finger to press down on the scroll wheel, I often pinch down on the power button with my thumb. So I make my selection and also turn off the phone at the same time. Whoops.

Note where the scroll wheel and the power button on - virtually parallel on the left and right of the phone:

The power button for the PPC6700 was on top where it was not in the way but still not difficult to get to. I wonder why they moved it? Admittedly, not everyone holds their phones the way I do, but it sure is inconvenient! I wonder if the issue ever came up in user testing?