The reason given is:
Specifically, Google wanted to eliminate the button that lets you view all your open apps, making it easier to see your apps with a swipe.
But the underlying reason for wanting to do it comes from this quote from Dave Burke, Google's VP of engineering for Android
"Android have those three buttons at the bottom: Home, back and something else," Burke said. "And it's, it's a little too much, a little too complicated. I think of it as like walking into a room with three doors and it's like, 'which door do I go in?'"
My response to Burke would be: Well, Dave, when you walk into the room, and there's three doors, and one of them is labeled "bedroom", one of them is labeled "kitchen", and one of them is labeled "bathroom"; it's pretty easy to decide whether you're tired, hungry, or need to take a leak - so maybe you should look at having standards for labeling things.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:08AM (5 children)
I guess they are referring to the little square button on the lower right?
After having an Android for a few days, I know good and well why its there. It is easy as all getout to start processes, however ending them is often not that easy.
Its not long before you have run so low on resources the phone's OS is trying desperately to find a little ram here and there.
One touch of that lower right button and the reason the phone is so tepid becomes obvious. The thing is clogged with all sorts of stuff. And then its obvious what the little broom symbol is for.
I find it so frustrating that a lot of the newer stuff has much less usability to me than the earlier stuff. Its like having my house cleaned for me, but I can't convince the housecleaner that some of my stuff is NOT trash, and going through my personal life and telling other "interested parties" anything it finds. It may have the most beautiful eye-candy presentation imaginable, but it won't do what I want it to do, and does all sorts of crap I don't want it to do, and I have little control over it. Its "Business-Grade" software, and its nowhere near trustworthy enough for use when some individual has to take accountability over what it does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:15AM (1 child)
No kidding. That button opens the context menu in Firefox Android for example. I can't wait to accidentally swipe another screen open instead.
Apparently three buttons is too complicated. How dare the device have a 2 minute learning curve.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:27AM
Look at Einstein over here with his two minute learning curve.
Seriously though, some people are too stupid for three of anything.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:56PM (2 children)
So when you swipe stuff off the list what you're actually doing is - swiping stuff off the list. Not necessarily anything more. The process *might* end. It might not. Looks the same to you.
So while this will undoubtedly upset many users, it's the loss of a cherished illusion of something android NEVER let you really have in the first place, but that doesn't mean it won't be felt.
Android is such a steaming pile to begin with, I'd wish instant death on it but I'm afraid that would only allow iOS to metastasize even further.
A pox on them both, and on the defective by design hardware they animate as well. The entire industry is an anti-human potlach of wasted resources.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:11PM
I thought it was just a history list, with most of the processes in the literal 'background' having saved their state to 'disk' and stopped running.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:37PM
It's not an "end process" control though. It's a "please turn off" button. Behaved apps will behave. If you want superuser type controls then stock Android will be very disappointing.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:16AM (2 children)
I've heard the arguments ("can't read English") and I don't give a damn. Google is too lazy to translate and too politically correct to just use the World's most standard language.
Those pictograms are a language that nobody is born into. They might as well be Esperanto or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. They mean nothing to me. They are so damn generic and meaningless that I always forget what they are supposed to do.
So yes Dave Burke, in a way they are too complicated... but only because you refused to use a language I can read. Next time, try plain English.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:28PM
but "insightful" is not appropriate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:55PM
It's called Recents [android.com]. Internally it was called Activities during development but the calendar app people wanted that name. Then they switched to tasks but the business Notes devs fought and won that one. They couldn't use Apps since people thought that's the list of installed applications. They considered Background but some of the entries aren't actually running. Finally they decided on History but the browser people had them change it to Recents since people kept asking why Chrome's tabs aren't showing in the History...
The real problem is the confusion over the name reflects how no one actually knows what it does: It lists recently run apps. But what swiping apps off actually does? It doesn't signal kill -9. It could signal suspend to RAM, cache the heap, cache the assets but kill the process, cache the process and clear the assets, close the client and start the daemon, disconnect from the windowing system but keep running in background (client to service transition without losing assets) or some combination of the above. And that doesn't even begin to describe all the weird stuff going on with the threading over high and lower performance cores, sleep states or emmc vs sdcard storage being automatically moved around. Oh, and as schedulers and SoCs change, the behavior changes as well. e.g. Some low cost Mediatek SoCs and Samsung SoCs made anything getting swiped off get killed almost immediately without suspension unless whitelisted manually over memory and compute constrained / for better UI responsiveness despite Google telling them not to.
IMHO, anything short of a poop emoji won't begin to describe what a shit salad this Recents is.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:37AM (1 child)
a VP has a brainwave, wanting to assert themselves on the design, decides to remove a button.
No one in the meeting has enough nous/pull/balls to say "no", or can't put into one slide /few ebough words reasons why the button shouldn't be removed...
Button is removed.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:31AM
Holy shit, you're exactly right!
I feel a bit slow for not having thought of that myself, gods know I've worked with enough "managers" like that over the years.
The general vibe is "Look at me managing. I'm so busy with all this managing I'm doing".
Lucky for me my current manager lives in a different country.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:40AM (14 children)
"Let's copy Apple's stupid ideas".
It's really not hard. Back and Home. The third is entirely optional, really, if you don't tap it you can do everything you would do some other way. But it's really "right-click" / task manager.
However, if you didn't just have a circle, square, triangle or other completely useless symbols on them, and actually REFERED TO THEM BY NAME occasionally, people might know what they do.
Seriously, as stupid as a single-button mouse, STOP TAKING INTERFACE AWAY. Gestures are incredibly crap for controlling an interface.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:49AM
What, like Sony?
(Score: 4, Informative) by anubi on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:19AM (12 children)
Just in case anyone is reading this topic for feedback... here I am, old fart, had no idea how to use a smartphone.
I found one behind DelTaco one day. A BLU android phone. Took me some time to figure out how to turn it on. I finally discovered if I held the big button on the right down long enough, it would turn on just long enough to say its battery was dead. I saw it had a USB connector, so I assumed it would use USB power to charge it... so I took it home and plugged it into USB power and left it overnight. Sure enough in the morning, it powered up. But I still had not figured it out enough to do much with it. It did not take long before I found out what the triangle, circle, and square did, although I had no idea yet how to make it connect and place calls. A bit more fooling around with it and I got it to place a call to a number in its contact list. Whoever I called had the info on who was calling, and they knew the person that lost the phone. They told me they could get in contact with the owner and have him drop by DelTaco to retrieve his phone, and I took the phone back to DelTaco and left it with the manager.
TLDR -> An old fart picked up a phone he did not know a damned thing about, and did not have all that much trouble figuring out the circle, triangle, and square. Even he recognized the importance and functionality of each, and even took the time to post a reply: DON'T CHANGE IT! It is an elegant functional design. And even he, well known for bitching on damned near anything, did not bitch on it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:23PM (1 child)
They aren't going to stop removing features/control and generally dumbing things down until everyone stops using smartphones and the internet in general.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:25PM
And if you think I am kidding, look at broadcast TV.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday May 15 2018, @03:03PM (9 children)
You're lucky the phone was even unlocked.
I have had any number of phones handed into my workplace where we have absolutely no idea whose phone it is, can't unlock it, can't even ANSWER it, let alone access the addressbooks etc.
All because of things like fingerprint readers and passcodes.
One phone I had to do enormous detective work based on a name of a teacher sending an assignment to a phone (that popped up as a visible notification). I managed it but it was far from easy.
Sometimes the only recourse is to remove the SIM and inform the carrier, but that's rarely likely to actually result in a hit as they don't want to tell you anything and if they can't / don't inform the owner to come collect it, there's nothing you can do..
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Tuesday May 15 2018, @03:34PM (2 children)
I've done that. Found a brand new iPhone in the middle of the road which I managed to grab before it got run over. The phone was locked so I telephoned the carrier: "hi, I've found this phone, and I'd like to get in touch with the owner so I can return it" was met with utter confusion. Eventually I managed to speak with a manager who was also confused until I used my Jedi mind tricks to have them come up with a brilliant plan to get themselves, me and the owner on a three-way conference.
Unsurprisingly the owner was very happy to get their phone back when they turned up on my doorstep the following afternoon - but the effort to do so was far from inconsiderable.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:39PM (1 child)
This is why you should set up ICE (In Case of Emergency) contacts and make them accessible from the lock screen
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:01AM
I set that up.
Phone kept pocket-dialling the first entry.
Now have a custom home page message with a friend's phone number and my name - which worked, the one time I left my phone in a park.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:55PM (3 children)
Best bet is make sure the battery is charged and it is turned on. If it's an Android and the user hasn't done something too dumb, they can locate the phone through Google.
Otherwise, they should surely notice eventually that their phone is missing and retrace their steps.
If nobody shows up to claim it in 90 days (local law may vary), it is abandoned. Pull out the sim and do a factory reset. Enjoy! Or giove to a shelter. Many battered women's shelters hand them out since even without a SIM, the phone will dial 911.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2018, @08:49AM (2 children)
How about a battered man shelter? Oh, there probably isn't one. Don't support the sexism. Men get battered too.
Truth is though, the shelters are actively harmful. They do not really try to resolve issues. They are staffed by some very bitter anti-male people who actively push families apart. Children and their fathers are the obvious losers in all this, but women lose out as well when families fall apart.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday May 16 2018, @09:31AM
Or battered fish?
Wait, that's not what you meant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @11:14AM
We men did this to ourselves.
We will do nearly anything to get a piece of snatch, like moths drawn to a flame, or a mosquito determined to get a drop of blood.
There was a time when a man expected to be PAID to take on such a risk and responsibility.... it was called a Dowry, and the woman's father was usually saddled with this.
Today's men not only waive the dowry, but also assume the responsibility of keeping the woman entertained sufficiently to keep her around, lest her lawyer take everything you have.
I know this sounds awful selfish, but staying single seems the only prudent action for the male if he expects to have a roof over his head on his deathbed. There are no "safety nets" for males. Boobs will get you benefits, a penis only marks you as a worker drone, expected-like the drone bee- to produce until you are no longer economically viable.
Go ahead and flamebait me... as a lot of people won't like what I just typed at all... but its the way I see it.
Just don't blame it on the women... we men are totally responsible for this - by being so gullible as to take directions from Hollywood and take all this lovey-dovey stuff as filmed - and we get what we tolerate - and we have tolerated way more than I was willing to tolerate.
So the other guy got the trophy prize... then I later see he's the one who caught a batted hornet's nest.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:58PM
Newer phones (last 3-5 years) support a Medical Info screen that can be pulled up from the lockscreen. Of course, it's up to the owner to actually enter their info and enable it, but if they did then it would definitely come in handy for locating the owner of a lost phone.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday May 18 2018, @07:30AM
Gotta admit had the phone been locked, the chances of getting it back to its owner would have been slim... about the only thing the phone would have been good for is a donor phone for its LCD screen and battery, and maybe its TF card if it had one. There are very few parts in modern electronics I have the tools to remove and repurpose, much unlike the electronics I got into when I was a kid ( vacuum tube stuff... nearly 100% of the components could be removed and re-used to build other things.. I was using parts from trashed TV's to build guitar amps for the longest time... all I had to actually buy was the output transformers.
My amplifiers had a rather unique sound, as I was using the 6CD6 type horizontal output tubes as power output tubes, and was having a good time playing around with 6BE6 pentagrid AM converter tubes and 6BN6 gated-beam tubes to make odd-sounding devices - well, this was in the 60's... we went out of our way to make things sound weird... psychedelics and all that, ya know. Actually, I only built two amplifiers - I don't know where they are now... they probably got tossed because they were definitely not anything to look at... they were built on stripped TV chassis. Typical high-school kid who has no shop experience type construction. )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kazzie on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:48AM
As it happens, this week I've retired my Nokia N9 (vintage 2011) and switched to an Android-based phone (Keyone).
The N9's Meego OS was based around swiping gestures, and had no front-facing buttons at all (Three on the side: volume up/down and power). For those of you unfamiliar with it, there were three homescreens which you could swipe left/right through: launcher, running apps, and feeds/notifications. When an app is running, swiping up or to the side (from offscreen) takes you back to the homescreen, whereas swiping down closes the app. Pressing the status bar at the top of the screen opens the status window.
I'm now in the process of training myself not to swipe down to close programs on the Keyone. It's a slow process.
(I wasn't previously aware that Apple had ditched their front button in their latest Iphone: it's not a product line I have any interest in. Back in 2011 I had the impression that Nokia were attempting to one-up Apple by getting rid of the last front button on their brand new burning platform.)
(Score: 5, Funny) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:04AM
As it turns out, *I* have a gesture to share with Dave, but I don't think he'll like it.
Much like dogs, managers like to mark their territory. They use a similar method.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:50AM
I prefer an open concept setup. No doors. All in one room. Very cozy "safe-space" [mirror.co.uk]
Then you just have one door.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:55AM (3 children)
Remember when the three symbols actually meant something? Once upon a time, for example, the home button looked like a little house. Then some overly clever designer changed it to a circle. Idiocy...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday May 15 2018, @11:03AM (1 child)
They got the circle from Australian Aborigines.: "campsite"
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/ajourneydowncompatiblerevised-130124110827-phpapp01/95/aboriginal-art-10-638.jpg?cb=1359025780 [slidesharecdn.com]
The others: possibly, from too much coke.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:20PM
Even if true, that's irrelevant. What proportion of Android users are Aborigines?
It just another example of designers uninterested in usability.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:19PM
Don't worry, they'll eventually come around full circle [youtube.com].
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday May 15 2018, @11:35AM (1 child)
So when I slide my phone into my pocket something that happens to have the right capacitance ends up controlling my phone and shutting down my apps? No thanks.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:02PM
That's why you have a nontrivial unlock pattern instead of slide-to-unlock--not for the security, but for the pocket-dialing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Funny) by richtopia on Tuesday May 15 2018, @11:37AM (6 children)
If you walk into a room and see three doors, there intuitively would be four doors in that room. For this discussion it is actually quite relevant because one of the buttons is "Back".
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:03PM (2 children)
If you walk into a room and see 17 doors, you are at google's washrooms. One for each gender at google.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:13PM
And a 12v DC for bots.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:37PM
#TryingTooHard
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:22PM (1 child)
Not necessarily. Aside from the obvious you could have turned around in the room to see the door you just came from as your third door, you also could have backed into the room and stopped when you were against the far wall. That you may have tripped walking backwards blindly is not my problem.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:46PM
if you're going to nitpik, he may have walked into a room with several mirrors on the walls and sees the same door three times
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:02PM
"There... are... THREE... doors!"
- Capt. Picard
(sort of)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday May 15 2018, @01:24PM
The nice thing about android is it is how much you can customize it. I don't care too much what google does with vanilla android, because I'm still free to do my own thing. My phone doesn't have a navigation bar, so they can do whatever the hell they want to it. The navigation bar uses up over 1/4" of screen real estate, so I've turned it off. It is replaced with pie control that come up when you touch a narrow strip at the side of the screen. I have not two, not three, but eight buttons configured on it. I have the traditional home/back/recents along with a few other toggles, navigation commands, and app shortcuts, and because it is activated at the side, where your thumbs tend to be, the pie control is much easier to use one-handed, especially on a big, clumsy phone.
However, because pie hijacks normal system commands it requires root, and google keeps making it more difficult to root android in the name of security. I still don't entirely grok why the first step in setting up a PC for decades has been setting a root password, but rooting is almost regarded as a criminal activity on a pocket computer. I don't like how iOS and Android are copying and converging, but I don't particularly care as long as I am free to customize.
iOS devices are nice. I don't want to fan the flames of that holy war, they're just not for me. It isn't this change to the nav bar I find troubling, it is the assault on customization and in particular root and custom roms that bothers me. Google needs to dust off their "be together, not the same" campaign of a few years back and reacquaint all their engineering leadership with it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday May 15 2018, @01:42PM (1 child)
How exactly does changing your three doors out for two doors and a concealed moving wall panel help you decide which to use?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:59PM
Nobody seems to give a wet slap about discoverability anymore. The Principle of Least Astonishment? Anybody? No, instead let's have shit like secret panels that you have to mouse to a specific corner--not that there's any hint this is a thing from looking at the UI, you just have to already know--and flick the cursor a certain way to access.
Also, since this is probably their fault, fuck tablets.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Appalbarry on Tuesday May 15 2018, @03:21PM (1 child)
I doubt I am alone in finding that Google products in general, and Android in particular, become less user friendly and more irritating with every version.
I am completely convinced that Android P will remove some things I need, hide settings that I want, and in general make my life less productive.
In particular I do not need or want "notifications" from every single app on the phone, and do not appreciate being harassed endlessly by Google Assistant nagware.
And I do not relish spending an hour or more figuring out how to turn off all of this crap.
Android has long ago become an exercise in "way too clever" over usability. Arguably some recent improvements are closer to "hold my beer, and watch this!"
The sad thing is that there were a few years when Google created genuinely innovative and useful products. Those days are long gone.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:56PM
I'm pretty tired of being stalked by the Google "do you want to rate this establishment we just tracked you walking into?" popups, but I had to laugh the other day when I was waiting to order at a sitdown Italian restaurant and for some reason it thought I was at a Taco Bell or something.
It's the little things in life
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hereweareagain on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:08PM
--How freaking hard is it to LABEL ICONS in apps? We've had this on PCs since time out of mind. Give me a 2-line text under your popup icons (I'M TALKING TO YOU, VLC) so I'm not blindly pressing stuff to FIND OUT what the hell it does!!
--I'm willing to admit I just *might* be wrong... Are you?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday May 15 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)
This is exactly why I despise friggin' iPhones -- can't figure out how to do anything because THERE'S NO DAMN BUTTONS!
Best thing about Android is that it has the buttons and in most cases they actually work. The most frustrating thing is when you get some garbage app that doesn't behave properly -- generally meaning the 'back' button acts as exit instead of back. With Apple, that is the situation for EVERY. SINGLE. APP. Back button move around, menus move around, settings may be global or local or sometimes both. No consistency at all. One example: My mom was having issues with rotation on her iPhone Kindle app. Turns out, there's phone rotation lock, and there's also app rotation locks. There's settings inside of apps, and there's app-specific settings in the main system settings menu, and there's the system settings themselves. So to fix that issue took nearly an hour of digging around through all the redundant settings, changing things that SHOULD have fixed it but didn't, until I finally found the right one. Would have taken ten minutes on Android, because there's ONE place for that setting, and it WORKS.
Also...every single button on my Android device has at least two, possibly three functions. Lock is also reboot. Volume up/down is also last/next track. Home is also split screen and one hand mode. App switcher is also menu. If I've gotta have the same button operating three different functions, that means there aren't enough buttons. And they think there's TOO MANY? Where the hell are they going to map all these features? Or is this step one to removing them entirely?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:40PM
Simple as can be. Just press the button 13 times fast while hopping on your left foot and singing Yankee Doodle (be sure you sign the words too) for the volume control. Note that fast means an interval of 0.521 and 0.522 seconds between presses. Otherwise you get factory reset. If you want Mute, get thje person next to you to kick your ass on the downbeat.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ilsa on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:27PM
This wouldn't be a problem if the budding UI Einstein over there hadn't replaced the perfectly good icons with playstation controller wannabes.
Seriously. Having a home and a back arrow is intuitive. A square and a triangle are not. The current fad of abstracting everything to incomprehensible symbols is stupid and I very much look forward to all these art school rejects being fired, or at least have their heads slapped out of their asses.
I miss the days when usability was something people actually strived for, rather than it being an inconvenience.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:59PM
Because niggers like swiping.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:11PM
> Android have those three buttons at the bottom: Home, back and something else," Burke said. "And it's, it's a little too much, a little too complicated.
This is your brain on mobile.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday May 15 2018, @07:17PM
I've never had a phone with this magical task manager button on it. I just hold down the home button.
Instead, I have a menu button. I guess they decided that wasn't needed at some point...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:10PM (3 children)
SN is supposed to be about the comments, yet the comments here are shit:
1. Android sucks!
2. Fuck icons!
3. Stop changing the UI!
4. Obligatory +5 Funny joke
Even the article is kind of bullshit, and no one cares about what the VP says, except CNet apparently.
So let's talk about the change itself, shall we?
Android currently has three software buttons almost always present at the bottom of the screen: back, home, and recents. These are labeled with the icons, respectively: triangle pointing left, circle, square.
The home button brings you to the home screen, which presents icons for app you can use to launch or switch back to an app. The recents button brings up a screen that lets you switch to a recently used app, in LIFO order. On the home screen, you can swipe up to access all of the installed apps (the home screen itself only shows apps that you have arranged there; presumably the apps that you use often). The all apps screen also contains a row at the top of the five or so apps that you would most likely want to access, based on machine learning AI magic. It turns out that these predicted apps are accurate something like ~80% of the time.
What this change does is remove the recents button and adds the ability to swipe up on any screen, not just the home screen, to access a new screen. This new screen is basically the recents screen with the five predicted apps at the bottom, and some obligatory UI aesthetics changes (for example, the recent apps are presented in a horizontal list rather than vertical). The idea is that the recent apps combined with the predicted apps satisfies almost all use cases, saving you from having to rendezvous to the home screen.
If you read through this, you realize that nothing really was removed. Some new "expert" features were added which aren't really worth mentioning, the recents button was changed to a gesture, and the UI was tweaked to keep the UI people employed, and that's about it. Nothing to see here folks.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:32PM (1 child)
Now that's what I call a comment!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @08:41PM
That too was a comment. I have stated it therefore it is!
(Score: 1) by xhedit on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:24PM
And here's the inevitable metacomment complaining about comments.
Shocker, people are tired of google changing shit for no reason. I like the recents setup and Android has gotten more and more unusuable after peaking in usability sometime in the 4.x or 5.x days.