[m463]

My mother got her first iphone years ago and was just petrified of the phone app.

I couldn't blame her. You touch ANYTHING, even the spam caller in recent calls, and it immediately calls.

why oh why can't there be a setting - on by default - confirm before dialing?

[tpmoney]

It’s not the specific solution you want (and that would be a good one to have) but one option might be enabling the touch accommodations in the accessibility settings and increasing the touch delay slightly so that it takes a more deliberate touch to activate. Downside is that it applies across the whole system and applies to typing on the keyboard too

[newaccount74]

It won't help at all. The problem is that Apple seems to hate explicit buttons, so you never know what tapping something will do. Here's an example in the phone app:

- in the contacts tab, tapping a contact will show details

- in the call list tab, tapping a contact will call them

There is no way to know ahead of time. You have to try it out, and then remember that the two tabs behave differently.

I have accidentally called people when I just wanted to look at their contact details more than once, and I've been using an iPhone for 15 years or so.

[actionfromafar]

I mean, the horizontal middle of the screen could be "dead" and a call only only initiated to the left or right.

Or whatever. There are many solutions and they chose to go for one of the most frustrating designs possible.