I could not agree less. One of my biggest gripes about my Droid is that the 4 buttons, which I use all the time, are virtual soft keys, not real buttons. I also miss the Green send and Red hangup button.
Also I'd just like to say, on all phones you should be able to hit the green send button to answer the phone without having to unlock it first. You should have to unlock to initiate a call. That way you won't pocket dial, but you will be able to answer a phone without having to look at it. On Jan 23, 10:14 pm, Peter Eastman <[email protected]> wrote: > This is partly a rant, partly a set of suggestions, and partly an > attempt to start a discussion on how to improve a basic part of the > Android UI. But to skip straight to the punch line: Android phones > have too many physical buttons on them, and those button don't work > very well. Now let me back up and explain why. > > When Apple designed the iPhone, they decided to completely do away > with physical buttons. Instead, they would have a touch screen that > allowed infinitely configurable UIs. Each application could have > whatever buttons were appropriate for it. This was a very good idea > that worked very well in practice, but they did end up making one > exception: the Home button. They decided that, no matter what options > an application offered at a particular time, you always needed a way > to get out of it, and the only way to guarantee that was with a > physical button. > > When Google developed Android, they decided that one button might be > enough for Apple, but it wasn't enough for them. Why? Who knows? > Maybe they just thought more was better. It reminds me a bit of the > mid 80s. When Apple introduced the personal computer mouse, they made > a big point of the fact that it only had one button. "All you need to > do is point and click." But Microsoft decided that Windows mice would > have two buttons, and thus would be more powerful than Macintosh > mice. And then Unix system vendors of course had to make their > computers even more powerful, so Unix mice all had three buttons! Of > course, this didn't actually make them more powerful. It just made > them a lot more confusing to use. > > So let's look at the four buttons found on every Android device: Home, > Menu, Back, and Search. Do they really belong there? Do they do more > to help or hurt the user interface? > > First is the Home button, the one button Apple felt was required. I > agree with their judgement, and have nothing to say against it. So > let's move on. > > Next is the Menu button. I can understand the logic behind it: lots > of applications need to display menus, so it makes sense to provide a > standard mechanism for bringing them up. That sounds reasonable. So > what's wrong with it. > > Well, first there's just the fact that it's unnecessary. If an > application wants to offer a menu, an on-screen button would work just > as well. But much more importantly, it turns every menu into a hidden > feature. There is absolutely no way to tell when a menu is > available. The user needs to just happen to wonder, "Does this screen > have a menu?", then try pressing the Menu button to find out. That is > simply a bad user interface. > > What can we do about this? It's probably too late to get rid of the > Menu button, but there are several ways to improve the situation. One > is for developers not to rely on it. If you want to make a menu > available, provide an on-screen button as an alternative to the Menu > button. Another option is to establish a standard indication to tell > the user when a menu is available. Perhaps this could be a standard > icon somewhere on the screen, or maybe the Menu button could light > up. But users really need to be told when a menu is available. They > shouldn't be required to guess. > > Next comes the Back button. At first glance, this seems reasonable. > The idea of a Back button is familiar to anyone who has used a web > browser, and it works very well there. So why not here? > > The problem is that the Back button doesn't actually do what people > expect it to. Users assume the Back button means, "Take me back to > where I was before." But it doesn't. It actually means, "Pop the > topmost activity off the stack of the current application." As long > as you stay within one application those are equivalent, but as soon > as you start switching between applications the behavior becomes > frustrating and unintuitive. For example, suppose you are working > with an application. Press the Home button to bring up the home > screen, then press Back. You expect it to take you back to the > application you were just in, but it doesn't. The behavior of the > Back button really needs to be reconsidered and made more rational > from a user's perspective. > > Finally there's the Search button which simply has no business being > there. I suppose this betrays Google's biases. They're a search > company, so of course they assume that searching is one of the most > fundamental things anyone would ever want to do. It isn't. I would > bet that 90% of Android device owners use the search function less > often than other features of their devices, such as making phone > calls, sending text messages, or taking photos. So why does search > need its own physical button, while a standard application is fine for > all the others? Answer: it doesn't. The Search button should be > eliminated. > > Ok, those are my very opinionated opinions on the subject. I'm > raising this subject because I sincerely want to help improve the > Android UI, and I believe it can be improved, and the most prominent > aspects of the UI are the place to start. > > Peter -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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