Android Navigation Buttons vs. Gesture Navigation
I can't remember if I posted about this topic here, or in my week notes, but I'm writing about it here, now. I think all phones nowadays have some form of gesture navigation; Apple has its single swipe up gesture for Home / Recent apps. Android has the same, but also has a "back" gesture on the sides of the screen (because Android has always had a "back" button that iOS never had).
But (I believe) all Android phones have the option to go back to an on-screen button navigation system. The three buttons are, from left-to-right: Recent Apps, Home, Back. You can also swap the "Recents" and "Back" buttons if you prefer, but I'm fine with that layout because the physical buttons on Samsung phones were always laid out this way.
I've tried the on-screen buttons before, and always gave up on them in less than a day. I think I gave up because I kept trying to swipe back on the sides of the screen out of habit, as well as the fact that I think it's just fun to swipe up for the recent apps. For whatever reason though, I thought I'd give it a try again this past week and committed to at least a full day.
The first day was a little rough - I kept defaulting to gestures before remembering that I had to use the buttons. But once I got used to that - it was a much better experience. Now I no longer have any issues accidentally backing out of the photo edit screen when I'm trying to crop a photo! I can tap the "recents" button twice to toggle between apps. I can press & hold onto the home button to get Google Assistant (either voice/type commands, or the neat new "circle to search" thing).
It hasn't been without some bugs though. Occasionally the nav buttons will just...disappear from the screen. I'm not sure why this, but it hasn't happened often enough to be a major cause for concern. I haven't figured out a reliable way to work around this bug yet, but I think I could just swipe down for the notification/quick tool bar to open the settings app. I think that should return the nav buttons to the screen.
Another issue is that my phone is quite tall, which means that it can be occasionally annoying to have the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen. Hitting 'back' or 'recents' can be difficult in certain situations, making the phone a truly two-handed device. This isn't as much of an issue with gesture navigation, though that's not perfect one handed either. On the other hand, Samsung has a "one-handed device" function that you can use that I think would solve this problem if absolutely necessary.
I don't know - I am leaning toward keeping the navigation buttons. But there is something inexplicably cool about the gesture navigation. Maybe it's because it seems a little more futuristic than tapping buttons? I don't know. They tapped buttons a lot in Star Trek: The Next Generation and that's a pretty cool future to live in1.
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Although they need to learn to reduce the amount of devices they use; have you seen how many PADDs they use to display a single document?↩