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.

Comments

Physical buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad my device has physical buttons. Hopeful!y there is a way to disable this on other devices.

Re: Physical buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Google developers cannot read so they have no idea there were home and back buttons and they invented a gesture. No thanks

Force quit

[ichthus]

This is fine, but I hope they somehow retain long-hold-on-back-button = force quit (enabled in developer options). I love this feature.

Re: Force quit

[bhcompy]

The things I force quit in Android are things that run in the background that I want to stop running. iOS is much more restrictive about what runs in the background, so I don't have the problem of having to force quit those applications on iOS, but that also means I'm installing those applications on Android because they work better. So, yea, I quit less on iOS, but I also do less because of it's limitations(disclosure: I carry two phones, one iOS based and one Android based).

That said, Android has started to shift in the iOS direction with Pie in regards to restricting background processes, and will seemingly double down on that route with Q, and it's put a lot of useful applications that run in the background in a bad spot as they've become more unreliable without excluding them from Pie's aggressive battery optimizations and background services restrictions(through banner requirements, which don't really alleviate the issue in my experience).

Buttons

[fluffernutter]

How is a swipe easier than a button? Why can't people understand buttons??

Re:Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not easier, they just want more minor annoyances to detract from larger grievances

Re:Buttons

[Fly Swatter]

From marketing dept: Buttons just get in the way of our zero bezel goal, anything else will sell less phones - trust us.

Re:Buttons

[DontBeAMoran]

A swipe is easier because it uses the touch display that's already needed. It doesn't cost anything, it doesn't take any room, it can't break unless the display itself breaks.

A physical button adds complexity, adds cost, adds manufacturing time, adds a potential failure point and takes a lot more room than a swipe gesture (which takes no room at all).

Re:Buttons

[DarkRookie2]

takes a lot more room than a swipe gesture (which takes no room at all)

This is wrong. I need my whole screen to make a gesture. The software button is a lot smaller than that.

Re:Buttons

[AuMatar]

That's great- except they went to virtual buttons a long time ago. THere's no advantage in a swipe over an onscreen virtual button.

Re:Buttons

[DarkRookie2]

They can shove the screen space argument up their collective asses until the remove a lot of the extra padding, margins, and whitespace from their apps first.

Re:Buttons

[fluffernutter]

I'm fine with virtual buttons. I just don't like gestures. My hands are too big to do things like that constantly on a phone.

Re:Buttons

[hey!]

A lot of phone UI changes are not about making phones easier to *use*, they're about making the phones easier to *sell*.

Consider wrap around screens -- do they actually *improve* the functionality of the phone in any way? Or do they exist just to make you say "ooh" the first time you hold it? Or ultra-thin phones -- is a 7mm phone any more convenient, or would you rather have a 10mm phone with 2x the battery?

The very earliest Android phones had a dedicated area with four buttons stenciled on it: back, menu, home, and search. Now there's other reasons they did it this way, but this happens to be the way a UI functionality purist would design the interface. The button row interface is (1) manifest (you see there's a widget there to frob and it gives you some hint of what it's about), and (2) stable (those common buttons are always in the exact same place).

Every change made accessing these functions since that day hasn't been to make the users' lives easier; it's been to impress them when they're shopping for phones. And it quite evidently works, so you can't really blame Google or the phone manufacturers. Consumers get excited by novelty. You'll never get better vendors until you get better consumers.

Re:Buttons

[AuMatar]

No, there aren't any pros for gestures. They're less discoverable, require more effort, and they don't work in fullscreen apps like you claim- they are in fact far more likely to interfere in apps at any size because swiping is a very common operation. This is just a horrible idea from start to finish.

Fuck gestures

[DarkRookie2]

Gestures have to be the most opaque way to interact with anything.

Re:Fuck gestures

[GuB-42]

I found the "fuck gesture" to be a very clear way of interacting with people.
For example, if you meet some UI designers from Google, it can be used to show how much you appreciate their work.

Stop Screwing with the Interface...

[sqorbit]

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.

Re:Stop Screwing with the Interface...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the studies were right they wouldn't have to change anything, yet here we are. Sounds like the studies keep drawing different conclusions.

I'm glad I don't have to keep re-learning how to open my fridge or running the faucet or using a bar of soap.

Obsessive minimalism is mental illness.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Obsessive minimalism is mental illness.

[Fly Swatter]

If you look at it from the perspective that all these phones and tablets are 'consumption devices'. Well, they want to make it more and more like a TV, such that you don't really have much control to skip content or advertisements. You can pick a channel (app) and now just watch your entertainment and whatever ads they want to show you.

Clearly being a portable TV is their end goal, not a portable computing device.

Accessibility

[Hydrian]

What about accessibility issues? A button press is a lot less movement requirement than a swipe.

It's all about AMOLEDs

[Stormwatch]

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.

The display *will* break

[Anonymous Coward]

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.