Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons

Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons(vbsteven.com)

31 points by hannesfostie 14 years ago | 28 comments

Wilduck 14 years ago |

My not so technically inclined mother just purchased an iPhone to "keep up with the times." Her biggest difficulty with it so far is figuring out how to move around within any application, specifically going back. It's hard for her to realize that sometimes she has to hit the button called "back" sometimes it's called "cancel" and sometimes it's called something else. She would love a back button, even if it were inconsistent.

ajross 14 years ago | |

This is my intuition too. The iPhone model is a single app page swimming in a top-level sea with others. For some things, that's fine. But for many apps (browsers are obvious, but also games that have splash menus, anything with a folder-like hierarchy, etc...) there is a clear and obvious "back" metaphor. And iOS just doesn't do back.

That's not an excuse for Android apps that use it inconsistently obviously (though the framework is pretty good about making sure obvious implementations do the obvious thing). But on the whole I think it's a very good feature.

Likewise, "menu" is something that almost everything has and probably deserves a hardware button (or at least a button with a persistent location and presentation -- the Galaxy Nexus apparently has no "hardware" buttons outside the touchscreen).

The "search" button that so many Android phone have, on the other hand, is completely beyond me. Ridiculous.

Zhenya 14 years ago | | |

Search button at first seemed superfluous to me also, however I have really found a few great uses. I use it all the time now:

Instead of launching the browser and then going to an web address, I can punch it in after hitting the search button. Opens browser with that address.

I never have to launch the browser and then search for something.

It's also great if you need to find someone in your contact list and dont feel like scrolling

The search button is also contextual, so that if you're within an app you can search for whatever(maps, sms etc)

Also long pressing on the search button brings up the voice commands.

adestefan 14 years ago | |

I always get frustrated by apps that have an embedded browser. (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) The upper left will be a back button that returns to the app, but the browsers back button is in the lower left. I know that's how Safari is on the iPhone, but man do I always hit that app's upper left back, when I really want embedded Safari's lower left back.

div 14 years ago |

There 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.

thebigshane 14 years ago | |

Even though #2 isn't the topic of the original article, I also find it interesting. And looking over the comments it seems that most people prefer touch to hardware buttons.

I use my android mostly for calling, texting, music and instapaper (actually instafetch). I hate how I can't easily feel my phone and push a button for things like mute, or pause, or end call, or next song. Sometimes I actually have to unlock the phone with the top button, then swipe to really unlock, navigate to the right app/activity if it's not forefront, then look at the phone to see where the appropriate touch button is located.

Am I one of the few that wants more hardware buttons? And not the capacitive (fixed touch buttons) but the real buttons that maggit mentions elsewhere in these comments; buttons you can feel with your fingers.

nextparadigms 14 years ago |

I'm an Android user and I'll continue to be one in the forseeable future, but I have to agree that the back button "feels" inconsistent. There might be a logic behind how it works (OS-wide back button), but that doesn't mean it will make sense for the user. An app-level back-button makes a lot more sense to me. It should work just like it works in the browser.

That being said, I hope Google will try to get rid of all the physical buttons and "bottom bar buttons" in Android and replace them with gestures (learn from N9 Meego), so we can fully utilize 100% of the screen (and of course no more wasted front space with physical buttons, too). I think there are some phones coming out like the LG U1, which will have both a physical home button and virtual buttons with ICS. How does that make any sense? It wastes double the space.

Another feature request would be getting rid of the icons, too. I don't think icons belong in the touch world. You need bigger graphical elements, that are also richer than just an icon. I see them moving in this direction with some apps, but they need to move faster, preferably by Android 5.0.

GiraffeNecktie 14 years ago |

This 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.

maggit 14 years ago | |

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 :)

imperialWicket 14 years ago | | |

I have a Samsung Captivate (AT&T's Galaxy S) and while I have been quite disappointed with the device at a high-level, my issues have not been with android or the hardware buttons.

> 1. They are capacitive, so there is no tactile feedback ever

You can enable haptic feedback or tones (cringe), neither of which has substantial effect on battery life.

> 2. They are made to be near invisible, so you can't see them in dim light

True.

> 3. The icons on the buttons are not immediately crystal clear to me

While this may be true, they quite consistent with all the other android phones. (Are you specifically concerned about the having an icon for menu instead of the "menu" text?)

joelhaasnoot 14 years ago | |

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...

Raphael 14 years ago | |

That's funny. I had the opposite problem with my Motorola Droid. The 4 buttons were too bright and distracting from the screen. I found an app for rooted devices that turns off the button backlights, which is fine, because I memorized the positions: back, menu, home, search.

eren-tantekin 14 years ago |

"hardware buttons"? this article isn't defending android's hardware buttons. it's defending navigation buttons. whether they are hardware buttons or onscreen buttons is irrelevant in the context.

golgo13 14 years ago |

I wish my HTC HD7 running Windows Phone had hardware buttons. 90% of the time I've hit the capacitive search button, it was an accident.

billpatrianakos 14 years ago |

The dominating theme here is how the button feels. This post is a great defense and the facts are straight but in the end facts don't matter. Feelings do.

Apple has done a magnificent job of creating loyal converts based on feelings. Their devices have traditionally been behind Android on a number of features (but always catch up later) because they focused on making people feel like they could accomplish the tasks they wanted to.

Android goes about adding features that are super coolnewawesometrendy and they give it to you right away and it's your job to jump in and learn how to use it. Apple will slowly introduce you to new concepts even if it means limiting functionality. The Android and iOS approaches are both valid but one is better for my mother while the other is better for me.

So when we talk about the back button on Android maybe we're missing the point? Maybe instead of discussing whether the button is inconsistent or not we should be talking about how to make the entire OS feel like it helps you get what you want to do done. I don't have all the answers but I do know a few of the right questions.

Assuming you give someone an Android phone or tablet who has no previous experience or expectations... How do you make the button feel like its consistent? What is the intent of someone pressing the button? How will the action of the button fit in with the rest of the user experience? How can we get users to know what to expect after a single use of the button? Is the button even necessary? Was the decision to include this button made because of preconceived notions such as how phones used to function before touch screens?

This might be a tad bit off topic but I feel like these ideas are a natural next step in the discussion.

falling 14 years ago |

> 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.

ShaunK 14 years ago | |

Yes, but the main argument for the hardware back button being "broken" was that it was inconsistent. This article shows that the only thing it is inconsistent with is the iOS model of multitasking.

falling 14 years ago | | |

Personally, I think the model the designers built on activities makes perfect sense an is very interesting on a technical level, but as much as you explain them to me, it still doesn't do what I want, need or expect sometimes.

Activities are hidden, they are not a user visible concept, so you cannot easily build a mental model without knowing and consciously thinking about them. From the UI, it just looks that the button has been overloaded with two functions: changing applications and changing views in the same application, because applications and views are the two very obvious UI concepts.

I also think Matias Duarte and the Android designers agree that the back button has some problems as Android 4 now has two back buttons: the good old one on the bottom and another one on the top left that behaves just like iOS's. I'm not sure two buttons with similar but slightly different behaviors are the perfect solution but we'll see if people like it.

torstesu 14 years ago |

In 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.

mikeash 14 years ago | |

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.