Every Android Phone Had This Physical Button—Then It Vanished

We browse completely on modern phones by sliding our fingers on their screens, but at the start of Android, all the phones are delivered with buttons under the screen. One of these formerly prominent keys has completely disappeared, its role is no longer an essential part of how we sail on our phones.

Android phones had once (at least) four physical buttons

Android was designed during the phone era, when all our handsets had an abundance of pimples, which they came with a touch screen (most did not do it). On the underlying equipment with less reactive screens, it was logical that certain actions are assigned a dedicated physical button.

Android phones are delivered with a variable set of buttons before finally establishing a certain consistency. The very first Android phone, HTC Dream, was five. Two were to start and put an end to a call. One was to go to the home screen, and one was a return button. The fifth was placed separately, directly under the screen. She is the star of today’s history: the menu key. You can see his presence in the HTC product tour for the dream.

I have never seen the HTC dream. The first smartphone I wanted was the Droid Motorola (on which I never got my hand). He came with four capacitive buttons directly under the screen: back, menu, house and search. It has become the paradigm that would be common for several years.

On most phones, like the droid, these keys were not labeled. There were rather icons printed on the buttons, such as a rear arrow, a set of horizontal lines, a house and a magnifying glass.

By pressing “Back”, sent you to the previous screen and “Home” sent you back to the home screen. “Research” is another key that has disappeared over time, but it is this fourth button that we are here to talk about today.

Former Android phones occurred at a time when we all made most of our calculation on desktop computers and laptops. Smartphones were in their infancy and the tablets were largely Windows PCs with a stylus entrance. Most software at this stage were always designed with menu bars at the top, with familiar words such as file, publishing, preferences, etc.

The menu bars were not going to cut it on tiny touch screens that we sail with large blunt inches. The button on the Hamburger menu on which the software has since set was not yet an established paradigm. Instead, Android was designed with a physical menu button in mind.

Taping this button would make an optional screen grid appear on the current screen. In a way, this approach has changed the design of applications. The developers did not have to find a way to insert options in the application interface, because there was a dedicated way to access them. On the other hand, non-technical people may never clicking this button, creating problems to discover.

With the output of version 3.0 “Honeycomb”, Android has deleted all of his physical navigation buttons. Instead, we were presented three virtual navigation buttons: the back, the house and the recents. Since this version was exclusive to the tablets, the buttons appeared in the lower left corner in front of a clock and state icons at the bottom right. These three virtual buttons would replace physical buttons on phones with the release of Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”, the version of Android which I remember having felt the most excited to date (we have published a list of the best Android versions a few years ago, and you will never guess who was number one).

The inheritance of the menu button has become a little disorderly at this time. Most applications had been designed for old versions of Android, and it took them a long time to receive updates that incorporated the new design. Many have never done it. So, for years, Android displayed three points in the lower right corner as the fourth virtual button when you used an old application. It was a functional solution, but which seemed unbalanced given the introduced asymmetry.

This fourth fourth virtual button sometimes appeared for years, until gingerbread applications begin to look like an old obsolete memory. He left for good in Android 10, as the developers of the Sister XDA site reported at the time.

These days, these are gestures

The three virtual navigation buttons have disappeared from original Android, at least as a default parameter. These days, only Samsung Galaxy devices are still shipped with the three default buttons. I will not pretend to be nostalgic here. I get rid of it immediately when configuring a new Samsung phone or tablet. Although with the large volumes that Samsung sends, I would not be surprised if the majority of Android users still sail with virtual buttons accordingly.

Most Android phone models now use gestures, an approach to navigation on which the iPhone has also set. We slide up from the bottom to go to the home screen and slide sides to return to the previous screen. Sliding down and keeping our thumb on the screen for a few moments reveals our recent applications. In short, we sail in the same way, just with different input methods.

As for the menu buttons? These now exist directly inside applications, and they can vary with each. Most use a hamburger menu button placed at different parts of the screen. Some have managed to do without a menu button.

In some respects, the solution we landed is one step back compared to the days of the physical button. Access to the application settings is less consistent. But would I likely to slap a dedicated button on the side of my phone? The applications are more complex than before, and with the size of modern screens, it would probably be more problems than pain.