Friday 11 May 2018

A New Era of Smartphone Operation.

Natalie Matthews-Ramo.
The iPhone X and Android P are laying the groundwork for a period dominated by gesture navigations.

Buttons have long been a mainstay of our smartphone experience. Then, in September, Apple introduced a suite of new navigation gestures it on the iPhone X in lieu of a home button. Now Google’s Android P is following its lead. In the next major update to the Android operating system, it will lose the signature trio of virtual buttons at the bottom of the screen—the back button, home button, and app switcher—in favor of swipe-based on-screen navigation. According to The Verge, this “completely revamps the core navigation” of your Android smartphone.

Unlike iOS, which did away with the idea of the home button entirely, Android P will still offer some semblance of a virtual home button you can tap to return to your phone’s home screen or long-press to launch Google Assistant. Now, however, you can also half swipe upward to go the “Overview” screen (the multitasking screen) or full swipe upward to open your device’s app drawer. You can also swipe to the right to flip through your recently used apps or, as before, swipe downward from the top of the screen for the notifications tray. The back button previously located semi-permanently in the bottom left of your phone’s screen is gone, although some apps may still offer an on-screen back button you can use.






Full story at Slate.

By Christina Bonnington.

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