I'm with you. I couldn't make gestures into something that was good for me. My current phone lacks physical buttons (except for power and volume up/down), and I've never stopped missing them -- it's my #1 complaint about the phone.
Gods I miss having real customizable gestures on Android. It took me years to unlearn my gesture set, especially "double tap with three fingers" to close the current app and go home.
As the unfortunately named grabcocque pointed out, you’re only really replacing the simple button press with one gesture. Beyond that you’re replacing complex uses of the button with gestures. And most of the complex stuff is non-essential to using the phone.
I really like the way android did it. Retaining old touch screen buttons as a default and for those who want it, but also having the opiton of switching to a sleek new gesture-based way to navigate (taking less screen space), with both being supported.
This doesnt make sense for phones. But when it becomes reliable, it will be a good usecase for smartwatches.
It already has less screen area and limited option for button input. So gestures makes sense.
When it comes to core UX, the current-gen iPhones and iPads are less usable than Androids. For one thing, this whole idea of swiping from beyond the edge of the screen, in many places without even a visible indicator that it's an available gesture, to do the most basic stuff like opening Home, is a severe regression compared to simple buttons; and it's even worse because some of the swipe gestures do different things depending on how far you swipe. To be fair, Android also introduced this misfeature, but at least you get a checkbox to restore the old behavior.
Back then the UIs and OSes were less set in stone. Nowadays we have two mobile UIs: iOS and Android (while there's also the gesture-based SailfishOS [1]). Just like everyone's a Qwerty user, which isn't necessarily the most efficient, even on mobile (example [2]). Problem is, you can only deviate so much from the defaults/standards.
I think they are over-engineering it. I have never liked gestures because it's difficult to discover something you can't see. A button would have been better than an invisible squeeze gesture.
Except that those boil down to a couple of basic gestures: tap, pinch, swipe. The hardware buttons are irrelevant in this case. Oh, and swipe to delete? That's in the "manual" that comes with the device. It's smaller than a dollar, for god's sake.
Conversely gesture support on Android is forever broken. You should expect side edge swipes to work as the back button. But most apps have panels displayed using the same gesture.
I disagree. What Nokia is solving here is true buttonless navigation. No one else is using swiping in that way. However everyone is trying to go buttonless. Android has done it in the easiest way, replacing hardware with software buttons and calling them not-buttons. It has been rumored that iOS will go buttonless too, but who knows how. WebOS is the only that has kind of done this. You can navigate WebOS without buttons but it still has a "button" in the gesture area that most people use anyways. Swipe is the first time someone has been able to make the OS buttonless in a way that doesn't feel tacked on. Calling that revolutionary is hyperbole, but it is an important UI development for where we are inevitably going.
Why has this not taken off? Off-the-surface gestures seem like they'd really enrich smartphone experience. I don't get why this low power proven tech has not been incorporated into phones. It's already 8 years old!
The android buttons in most cases these days are not hard buttons but soft ones that could just as likely change at the whim of Android, using your own hypothetical situation you came up with. They are cumbersome because usually it takes two hands to press them, as they are small buttons at the bottom. You end up needing one hand to hold the phone and the other to accurately press the button. With thumb-gestures, you can do it blindfolded in one hand. In addition, the buttons take up screen real estate.
Also, have you actually used the BlackBerry gestures? Upon getting a BlackBerry, the very first thing it does is a 1 minute tutorial explaining how to use the gestures. There are only a few. They really aren't complicated. They just take a brief explanation and the reward is you get a more functional interface.
Gestures that require swiping are the worst, in my experience. Even worse than borderless buttons. They're undiscoverable and if there is any tutorial showing how to use them it's only shown once.
I recently had to disable the opaque swipe-to-answer on my dad's Samsung because some jackass designed and/or business owner made that the default.
I wish designers, etc, would all have to go through an annual boot camp where they have to watch older people navigate their products (without being able to intervene and help).
> The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures.
Yes, that's the case. When you're using gesture navigation the only visible UI left is the horizontal bar at them bottom. Apps adjusted for gesture navigation will also draw behind that line.
Gesture navigation is still an option which might not be enabled by default on all devices, but I strongly suggest trying it out. I used it quite some time with the latest release candidates of Android 10 and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back. Especially the back swipe is really nice.
Alternatively, "include every option so everyone is left slightly unhappy."
I can't imagine ever going back to a phone with a button. Every time I pick up my daughter's iPad, I try to use gestures on it before remembering that I have to press that button, which already seems like a relic from the past.
It took minutes to get used to swiping up instead of pressing a button. It now feels like the most natural thing in the world, and I wonder why they ever started with a button. (Not really, but that's how natural the swipe gestures feel)
Imo ios gestures are not even that good compared to android. The ability to go back by swiping from any edge is so much easier than reaching to the top left of the screen...
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