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Android Q May Change the Back Button To a Gesture (theverge.com)
Android's back button might be going away entirely, replaced with a quick swipe to the left from the home button. From a report: XDA Developers has been digging into a leaked, early set of code from the next version of Android, codenamed Q, and the latest discovery from those forays is this potential demise of the back button, as well as a quicker app-changing animation when you swipe to the right. The way that gestures and buttons work in Android 9 Pie (the current iteration, at least if you're lucky enough to own a phone that runs it) is a little bit split. Google's Pixel has just a home "pill" and then a back button appears only when it's needed.
Here's a quick video XDA made showing the gesture system Google is experimenting with in Android Q. It is, as anybody could have predicted, a little messy. For something as core to a phone as "going home" or "going back," the fact that different phones have different methods could be a problem.
Here's a quick video XDA made showing the gesture system Google is experimenting with in Android Q. It is, as anybody could have predicted, a little messy. For something as core to a phone as "going home" or "going back," the fact that different phones have different methods could be a problem.
I'm glad my device has physical buttons. Hopeful!y there is a way to disable this on other devices.
This is fine, but I hope they somehow retain long-hold-on-back-button = force quit (enabled in developer options). I love this feature.
sig: sauer
How is a swipe easier than a button? Why can't people understand buttons??
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Gestures have to be the most opaque way to interact with anything.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
If it' ain't broke, don't fix it. Seriously though, why do developers (yes I'm talking to you too GNOME) feel the need to constantly change UI's? If something is working and working well for the users why change for the sake of having something "new". It's purely to add things to a feature list. People - If it ain't broke don't fix it. Engineers - If it' ain't broke we haven't added enough features.
Sent from my TARDIS
I've been doing this on my Moto G5 Plus for almost two years. I think some of the other Moto models also work like this. Is Lenovo really that far ahead of other Android companies?
It stems from the same "philosophy" as Zen buddhism, whose point is to reach "nirvana", where you havd completed abolishing your own existence "from this universe". Where all joy and purpose is done away with, in favor of the ultimate goal of doing away with the frightening overwhelming reality.
That this is harmful, is obvious to everyone.
Like in this case, like nearly all K.I.S.S. / " simplicity" / minimalism cases, where the new version is *more* cumbersome than the old version.
Yes, I want life to not be hard too. But I do not want to lose power and actually having a life in the process!
Especially "to the left" which always implies 'forward' to me...
I agree with you, but I can see the thinking where they think you are pushing thing backwards.
It almost seems like they need a setting that most games have, "invert look" where anyone who set it would be able to swipe towards the right to go back.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What about accessibility issues? A button press is a lot less movement requirement than a swipe.
No good deed goes unpunished.
These days they're really pushing AMOLED screens. Which is a GODDAMN FUCKING RETARDED IDEA because those damn things are too susceptible to burn-in. And this is especially noticeable in the areas where there is a static image most of the time -- such as the on-screen buttons. So, by getting rid of those, they mitigate this problem a little. Of course, the correct solution would be to not use AMOLED screens.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Because you will flip your phone out of your hand and onto the ground when trying to perform such a gesture with your thumb positioned so low on the screen.
Scrolling up and down is fine but gesturing left and right can get wobbly, especially on larger phones.
Since I was updated to Oreo, I noticed the back button doesn't work correctly anyway. Often times it functions as a home button instead. It's very frustrating when I'm trying to get to the home screen of an app, but it takes me to the home screen of the OS instead.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Why every software project these days need to be identified by both a version number and some cutesy name? What's wrong with just "Android 9"? No, it has to be Android 9 Pie. I get that people doing internal work on things might have code names for unreleased versions, but once it's released those aren't needed anymore.
But since we've already crossed that threshold let us go one step further. To differentiate possible versions of Android 9 Pie I suggest episodes of Seinfeld.
"It doesn't work in Android 9 Pie That Time we Waited for a Table at a Chinese Restaurant."
"Don't worry, they fixed it in Android 9 Pie Jerry Scratches his Face but the Woman he Wants to Date Thinks he is Picking his Nose!"
"For some reason I can't update from Android 9 Pie The Contest, despite how much I swipe!"
So I'm supposed to know the ins and outs of how a phone work in the 10 minutes I'm standing with it at the kiosk?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It works fine and has been one of the best reasons to get an Android over an iPhone X.
I am not sure but I think I have been using these type of gesture in my Moto 5 in the last two years. Swipe left to go back, swipe right to show running apps. There is a fingerprint sensor involved, and no other physical buttons.
The "back" gesture (dragging the pill from the center to the left) for use within an app to go back is counter intuitive. Gestures should represent the physical motion matching the virtual motion. For example, you swipe your finger downwards, and the image moves downwards (which is logically "up" as you are going back up to the top of the document). Since we are accustomed to a side to side flow where older items are on the left and newer is to the right (based on LTR reading, calendars, page orders in books, etc)), a dragging motion to the left is backwards. That should scroll the display to the left, which reveals new content coming in from the right. So this new "drag the pill left to go back" is totally backwards. Apple solved this by introducing a gesture starting at the very leftmost edge of the display swiping to the right, which drags the entire display to the right revealing the previous / older item coming from the left.
Better known as 318230.
... get seriously pissed off if phone OS developers start making changes like this. At least that's my prediction. You develop a degree of muscle memory after using a phone for a while and it's an annoyance to have to adapt every time a phone developer gets a crazy idea that'll get rolled out without any idea of disruptive it is to the end users. Just because it's "new" and "innovative". What's next? Making Dvorak the default keyboard?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I have got addicted to Xiaomi MIUI 10 gestures. I think they really got something right in their implementation. Drawn in the lower half of screen: full swipe left/right equals back button press, swipe up equals home, swipe up and stay in the middle brings up the recents menu, drawn in upper half of screen swipe left/right triggers app action. I hope these gestures become a standard so there are available on all handsets.
Part of the reason (but not the entire reason) that I still use a Windows Phone when I need to use a smart phone is that the interface is really good. I have an Android phone for testing, and I've used a relative's iPhone, but those are both messes compared to the Windows Phone.
I don't respond to AC's.
I prefer the old style navigation buttons. I don't care for something FORCED on me. Just leave the option to change it. I mean, make it the default, but allow it to be changed back. But, Google is starting to wall stuff off and making a locked down garden.
At least for now, do both. Allow the new gesture but keep the button. Let us get used to the gesture and explore how individual manufacturers will screw it up. If the gesture becomes popular, then and only then remove the back button.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I did this SPECIFICALLY because I was so impressed with the consistency of the back button location, the fact I could access context menus consistently with the settings / context / right click button.
. They've gone on to ruin the options / context consistency, for a multi task button.
They have removed my home button.
They're (generally) copying Apple with the headphone jack.
Now the back button? UI / UX designers peaked about ten years ago. Now they just break stuff to keep working and "innovating"
So so so so sick of stupid ui decisions the last decade. Across the entire industry.
That's why. The core audience for phones is the average trifling consumer, not techies.
Too bad not enough techies are willing to buy Linux phones for development to pay off. Android is broken by design and Google likes it that way.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
>"Android's back button might be going away entirely, replaced with a quick swipe to the left from the home button."
I have already been doing this on my Moto G5 for a very long time. You can change the fingerprint thing to be a back button by swiping to the left and home by tapping it. This removes the on-screen buttons that rob space. It seems to work relatively well. But it is NOT intuitive for someone like my Mom....
Immediately thought of this scene from one of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books:
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
Zaphod waved a hand and the channel switched again."
- ------ Go 'til ya know.
Last I checked, I was the customer not the lab rat.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not much else to say.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC