Android Q back button to get replaced with a gesture

Android’s back button might completely disappear, by getting replaced with a quick swipe to the left from the home button. XDA Developers has been working hard into a leaked, early set of code from the next version of Android, codenamed Q, the potential end of the back button is the latest discovery from these forays, also a quicker app-changing animation when you swipe to the right.

The technique that gestures and buttons work in Android 9 Pie is the current iteration, at least if you’re lucky enough to own a phone that runs it, is a little bit split. Google’s Pixel has just a home “pill” and then a back button appears only when it’s needed. For other tasks, you swipe up. Other phones running Android 9 have a three-button traditional layout, while still others teach you custom gestures to get rid of the navigation bar overall.

Recent iPhones have a little similar set of gestures, with a back gesture that works by sliding in from the left of the screen. Essentially we all have a future where to learn how to use a new phone you’ll just have to slide your thumb around and hope something meaningful appears.

Watch this video XDA made showing the gesture system Google is experimenting with in Android Q.

It is a little messy, as anybody could have predicted. For something basic as core to a phone as “going home” or “going back,” the reality that different phones have different methods could be a problem.

If we’re flawlessly honest, there’s also no way to be assured that this newly discovered gesture system XDA will be implemented the way it is. When you watch the video above, it seems like Google hasn’t really thought about how you’d be using the gesture area to switch back and forth between recent apps. And even if Google implement it on the Pixel, there’s no assurance that the rest of the Android ecosystem will also follow suit.

Discussing gesture areas, let’s talk about the lead image on this post. It’s a Palm Pre, a dead phone that never really had a chance. This whole “swipe to the left from the home button” and “swipe across the gesture area to switch apps” and even “the home button is just a small white dot or glowing line at the bottom of your screen” are all things Palm did with the Pre in the year 2009. I am on the record as being against rose-coloured webOS nostalgia, but sometimes the similarities are just too much to bear.

Just copy it entirely, Google, rather than have all this confusion. It’ll be fine. Heck, that’s what the iPhone X almost did.