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Android Q May Change the Back Button To a Gesture (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

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.

10 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Physical buttons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  2. Force quit by ichthus · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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  3. Buttons by fluffernutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    1. Re:Buttons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    2. Re:Buttons by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

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    3. Re:Buttons by AuMatar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  4. Fuck gestures by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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    1. Re:Fuck gestures by GuB-42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  5. Stop Screwing with the Interface... by sqorbit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  6. Re:Obsessive minimalism is mental illness. by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.