Slashdot Mirror
Google's Android N OS Will Support Pressure-Sensitive Screens (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the latest Developer Preview 2 of Android N, Google introduced new "Launcher shortcuts" to the beta OS. It allows developers to "define shortcuts which users can expose in the launcher to help them perform actions quicker." It's reminiscent of Apple's "3D Touch" feature found in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which can allow for specific parts of an app to be displayed in a pop-up menu when users forcefully press on an icon or other miscellaneous piece of information developed with the feature.
As mentioned in Phandroid's report testing the "setDynamicShortcuts(List)" feature, Google offered four different scenarios where Launcher Shortcuts make sense: Navigating users to a particular location in a mapping app, sending messages to a friend in a communication app, playing the next episode of a TV show in a media app, or loading the last save point in a gaming app.
"Google says that the manufacturers who build Android devices wanted this use case addressed by the OS itself," according to The Verge, so that developers "can code for all Android devices instead of reinventing the pressure-sensitive wheel for each OEM."
As mentioned in Phandroid's report testing the "setDynamicShortcuts(List)" feature, Google offered four different scenarios where Launcher Shortcuts make sense: Navigating users to a particular location in a mapping app, sending messages to a friend in a communication app, playing the next episode of a TV show in a media app, or loading the last save point in a gaming app.
"Google says that the manufacturers who build Android devices wanted this use case addressed by the OS itself," according to The Verge, so that developers "can code for all Android devices instead of reinventing the pressure-sensitive wheel for each OEM."
I think using shortcut widgets are better than using a right click menu on icons.
Can Apple has licensefeez?
Google needs to make better apps, plain and simple. The phones are already more than powerful enough and full featured and remember they are only phones. They have to be small so the need to scale them up will always be limited and I honestly think we already exceeded that need. What we see now is just a booming market desperately looking for the magic number to put it's cash on in the form of marketable gimmicks for phones. Yet, what people clearly want and need is more refined software. The problem is, most of the apps are free and Google doesn't seem to grasp that those core apps are what secures their platform for the future OR what makes it very easy for Windows 10 Mobile to all of a sudden look like a perfectly valid alternative one day, which will happen and will more or less take people by surprise somehow. The biggest reason for this will just be that Android mostly sucks as a phone platform. They just basically forgot to stay focused on phone features first and foremost. Secondly the UI is just a horrible random mess of whatever and most people don't like that. Third, Google will not focus on core apps, instead they are more worried about redundantly creating apps that they can trust and integrate into their platform. They created this wonderful open marketplace only to eventually replace all the open apps with their own because they realized that people cannot really trust random developers on the playstore with the kind of data that a mobile platform would eventually require. Now here we are Google's platform is insecure, it's bleed personal info, they're trying to crack down on the playstore, but years of lack of oversight has just left it all a big hot mess. They'd probably be just as good off taking what they learned and starting it all over from scratch with a focus on UI, core apps and proper branding. Apple has done a better job, but their platform is still in the infant stages. Windows 10 mobile on the other hand is a real platform, it's just not quite finished and needs apps, but the potential it has and the technology behind it is far better. It's more like a real OS shrunk down and not part of an OS cannabalized and turned into a mobile OS. iOS and Android are more like pieces of code meshed together and Windows 10 is more like mobile platform 2.0 which has learned from their mistakes as well as integrated into the world of Windows desktops which Google and Apple were foolish to not do. They will soon pay a stock market price for that decision. If I had money I'd buy MS stock. Their mobile OS is clearly better in 1/3 the time or less and most people love Windows 10. It's just a matter of time now.
Android or iOS will become worth more than a steaming pile of shit when they support a proper nested folder structure and general access to data for the authorized user.
As it stands, they're both basically busy boxes for morons.
"Google offered four different scenarios where Launcher Shortcuts make sense: Navigating users to a particular location in a mapping app, sending messages to a friend in a communication app, playing the next episode of a TV show in a media app, or loading the last save point in a gaming app."
How about a button that you can see, that does this stuff when you click it? None of these use-cases justify variable pressure sensitivity. Basically, drawing applications do, and that's about it. If this was actually somehow beneficial, we would've seen pressure-sensitive mouse buttons standardized two decades ago.
"Oh no... he found the
I would be more impressed if someone invented and marketed a tactile touch feedback interface, TNG era style.
That's something which would be an actual revolution.
what the hard press does until you stumble across it. For our iOS app, we have great usage metrics for every action, and only a tiny portion of users use the 3D taps that we spent a ton of money and time adding to the app. Yes they'll become more useful as designers get better at creating useful features and as users become more acquainted with them, but they just aren't intuitive like dragging one finger to scroll or two fingers to zoom.
Bullshit.
rijifjin,fn,n,mf ewmrnmnrir3u43iu4iu3i3u3iur
I'd be a lot more impressed if they could roll out security patches to what's already out here.
New versions don't mean squat if they're still the same old swiss cheese crap.
Capacitive touchscreens work great ... until they get wet. With the recent push by Samsung into the water-resistive phone/tablet market, I imagine we'll be seeing an Android device that works entirely underwater within 12 months. Imagine taking your phone into the surf or the pool. It's coming!
but google, i beg you: let rudimentary functions like opening a menu identical.
In the last 4 years if have seen more pointless UI changes on Mobile devices than i like
Thanks.
Capacitive input devices such as touchpad's and touchscreens have always been touch pressure sensitive. It's a very simple principle. The harder you press, the larger the contact area that your finger makes with the screen / touchpad. My PS2 / Serial interface'd ALPS Glidepoint from almost 20 years ago could do this.
I wonder why it's taken so long for someone to realise this could be useful as yet another input vector. I should add that the Glidepoint never used this for input, it just showed a bigger circle on the task tray icon the harder you pressed. My guess is that windows 95 didn't know how to deal with pressure, though things like paint shop pro did work with a pressure sensitive wacom tablet.
Maybe apple don't use this feature, maybe they use a strain gauge in the glass? That said a strain gauge wouldn't work too well at the edge of the screen.
So, Google is deciding to fix its past mistakes with not implementing multi-window, and now they're actually looking forward and supporting features that aren't in any existing phones. Great!
Maybe we'll see decent keyboard/mouse support next, given that there are already netbooks out there running Android.
The universe where interest in that hardware wasn't aroused until Apple did it.
I look forward to see how it goes. Thanks for the info. Hug, Allan http://www.geradordesenha.eu/
None. There are none.
Assuming that this is the same as 3D touch (which it looks to be), that is... well, at best 3D touch is a useless feature that doesn't work reliably and you can ignore. At worst, it's yet another overloaded function on an interface that gets in the way and causes problems.
It's a pity that phone / OS manufacturers are too busy focusing on silly gimmicks, instead of rock solid reliability, responsive UIs that don't require a ton of CPU / GPU power and longer battery life.
Samsung Galaxy S4 which demoed that feature was released on April 27, 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
IPh 6s was released on September 25, 2015, more than 2 years later.
I don't mind the idea as long as it can be globally disabled. I don't like the idea that if I'm particularly heavy handed one day I'll tap an icon expecting one action and find it does something different. Or I jab at it when I'm in a mood and again, different action.
And how does this help with discoverability? That seems to be going out of window of modern UIs. Want to delete something? Er, is it a swipe? A long tap? Could it now be a harder tap? Who knows - nothing in the UI to help.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
"Too little, too late" doesn't apply to Microsoft. They'll get it "right" eventually. Because of their "Windows Windows Windows" philosophy, up to and including Windows running on everything, regardless of practicality, they're in phones for the Long Game. Us geeks can chatter, gnash our teeth, and fling poop all we want- the day a Win10 phone can do PinstaGramBook "well enough" for your average User is the day they deem it successful.
You think they're giving up on Windows on phones? You just know they're trying to shoehorn that beast onto a *watch* right now. Having followed MS for 25+ years I can say the one thing they don't ever ever EVER understand is that less is sometimes more. It's both their strength (backwards compatible bugs, they bend over backwards for developers developers developers) and their weakness (how big is YOUR WinSXS directory tonight?)
The Galaxy S7 Edge appears to already work under water
I'd be curious to know what kind of water that guy used. Distilled water is actually not very conductive. Salt water is. The phone might not work as well in something other than culinary water.
The fact that Galaxy S7 Edge worked at all underwater is impressive! The guy was able to swipe the screen with his finger, but I don't think it worked every time. I'd be interested in seeing a single-press test, and seeing if the phone can accurately locate the finger (XY) on the screen. Swiping is one thing, but if you can't press the visual buttons on the display, you're phone won't work under water.