Defending Android’s Hardware Buttons

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.

There are 2 things being discussed here:<p>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.<p>2) the fact that the back, menu, search and home buttons are dedicated hardware buttons.<p>Explaining how 1) works does not mean that 2 is not broken. Personally I find 2 to be the interesting discussion.<p>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.

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.<p>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 <i>and</i> virtual buttons with ICS. How does that make any sense? It wastes double the space.<p>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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.<p>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 <i>feel</i> like they could accomplish the tasks they wanted to.<p>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.<p>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 <i>feel</i> 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.<p>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?<p>This might be a tad bit off topic but I feel like these ideas are a natural next step in the discussion.

<i>&#62; 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.</i><p>Correct, but something being by design does not imply it not being "broken". We have plenty of examples of things with flawed designs.

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).<p>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.<p>[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.