Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
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Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#2This is only about certain behaviours of the Back button. On my Samsung phone I have four buttons on the front of the phone plus volume control and on/off buttons on the sides. The four buttons are invisible in dim light and even after using the damn thing for a year I'm uncertain of which button is where. As far as I'm concerned the buttons are broken.
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#3This is only about certain behaviours of the Back button. On my Samsung phone I have four buttons on the front of the phone plus volume control and on/off buttons on the sides. The four buttons are invisible in dim light and even after using the damn thing for a year I'm uncertain of which button is where. As far as I'm concerned the buttons are broken.
I have seen the Samsung Galaxy S, and the hardware buttons on the front have several problems:
1. They are capacitive, so there is no tactile feedback ever
2. They are made to be near invisible, so you can't see them in dim light
3. The icons on the buttons are not immediately crystal clear to me
My HTC Legend has none of these problems: I can find the buttons in the dark by feel, and the iconography is clear. To me, the back and menu buttons (and to a lesser degree the home button) are helpful tools that I use all the time.
I am planning on getting a Galaxy Nexus as soon as I can. The only worry I have about this phone is the lack of proper hardware buttons that I can locate and use by feel alone.
I love (some of) the hardware buttons.
So maybe it's just Samsung's implementation of the buttons that is broken, and not the concept of Android hardware buttons. I don't know :)
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#4There are 2 things being discussed here:
1) people being confused by the back button because they don't realize it will always pop the current view of the navigationstack, which is systemwide.
2) the fact that the back, menu, search and home buttons are dedicated hardware buttons.
Explaining how 1) works does not mean that 2 is not broken. Personally I find 2 to be the interesting discussion.
Seeing how these hardware buttons are being changed to be a dedicated part of the Galaxy Nexus' touchscreen, and how not all vendors actually put all 3 buttons on there, it's not too hard to argue that something about the hardware buttons is at least flawed, if not broken.
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#5This is only about certain behaviours of the Back button. On my Samsung phone I have four buttons on the front of the phone plus volume control and on/off buttons on the sides. The four buttons are invisible in dim light and even after using the damn thing for a year I'm uncertain of which button is where. As far as I'm concerned the buttons are broken.
I have seen the Samsung Galaxy S, and the hardware buttons on the front have several problems: 1. They are capacitive, so there is no tactile feedback ever 2. They are made to be near invisible, so you can't see them in dim light 3. The icons on the buttons are not immediately crystal clear to me My HTC Legend has none of these problems: I can find the buttons in the dark by feel, and the iconography is clear. To me,…
Why claim it has several problems if you've only "seen" a Galaxy S.
"1. They are capacitive, so there is no tactile feedback ever"
Wrong - You can enable haptic feedback for the menu/back buttons
"2. They are made to be near invisible, so you can't see them in dim light"
Wrong - They are backlit, making them easier to see in dim light
"3. The icons on the buttons are not immediately crystal clear to me"
Personal experience varies, I would say they are pretty self explanatory, if not, takes about 2 seconds to learn.
The bulge on the back/bottom of the Galaxy S allows you to instantly know which way your holding it, thus you always know exactly where the capacitive buttons are, regardless of whether it's dark or in your pocket.
Don't worry, you'll love the Galaxy Nexus, Samsung are producing top quality phones atm. Don't be put off by all the naysayers "cheap and plasticky" comments.
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#6> In the following article I will try to explain that this behavior is not broken. Instead it is exactly what the Android developers had in mind while designing the back button behavior.
Correct, but something being by design does not imply it not being "broken". We have plenty of examples of things with flawed designs.
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#7In my opinion, hardware buttons should be limited to only non-critical operations or operations with limited usage frequency (which may be an argument to why the button may be unnecessary in the first place).
A button such as the back-button on the android, is used to navigate in almost all applications. With the amount of "load cycles" the back-button experiences, it is bound to either fail or start operating inadequately [1]. If or when this happens, the phone becomes rather unusable as it is nearly impossible to navigate in applications that do not have any built in user interface options to perform the same action.
[1] I do not hold evidence for this to be true in general and my hypothesis is only backed by personal experience and the notion of failure rate in a load frequency perspective.
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#8At no point when using Android do I hit the back button and go "hmm, that's not what I expected", or "I wish it did something else".
Fact is, it just works. Not having a back button in iOS after following a link is such a jarring experience. Sure you can double tap the home button or 4/5 finger swipe and select the most recent app, that's way simpler and more intuitive...
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#9This is only about certain behaviours of the Back button. On my Samsung phone I have four buttons on the front of the phone plus volume control and on/off buttons on the sides. The four buttons are invisible in dim light and even after using the damn thing for a year I'm uncertain of which button is where. As far as I'm concerned the buttons are broken.
I have an older Samsung phone with a 4 way directional pad, but I sure am going to miss that. Most new phones don't have one (HTC Legend had an optical one) Having to navigate everything by touch isn't perfect either...
Re: Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons
#10In my opinion, hardware buttons should be limited to only non-critical operations or operations with limited usage frequency (which may be an argument to why the button may be unnecessary in the first place). A button such as the back-button on the android, is used to navigate in almost all applications. With the amount of "load cycles" the back-button experiences, it is bound to either fail or start operating inadeq…
Given how long keyboards last under far heavier and harsher loads than any phone button experiences, it's clearly not a given that a hardware button must start having problem during the lifetime of the product. But it does seem clear that manufacturers aren't interested in putting the same durability on phones as they are on keyboards, as I've seen these problems with iPhone sleep and home buttons.