thanks so much for removing this space waste and provide more area for the article. android phones usually have a (hardware) search button, most of the time a magnifier symbol. this is used for searching the phone book as well for browsers, etc. is there any thing why you do not want to use it?

Within the app, hitting the hardware search button already is used: it sets focus to the search field (if we drop position:fixed header, then this would also scroll you to the top so it's in view).

Note that this search button has been dropped from the software replacement for the hardware toolbars in Android 3 (Honeycomb) and 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

It's also possible to provide a search hook so that the app can be searchable from the global search screen, which can be gotten to via the hardware search button on the Android home screen in Android 2.x, and from the 'Google search' field on the home screen in Android 3 and 4.

We haven't done this yet, but I stuck a note into our bug tracker as it might be a nice addition:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33356

-- brion