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Comment by kyleslattery | Hacker News Reader

Interesting how Google has been removing the hardware buttons in favor of software buttons onscreen. I've always like having at least a home button to always be able to exit an app, even if the UI is frozen.

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The three extra physical buttons beyond Home are my favorite Android features!

- Menu: It's nice having a go-to place to find options or additional functions. With the iPhone, it's however the app author decided to design his software. With Android, hit menu, it's probably there.

- Search: Again, having a context-sensitive search button is a big win. It pulls up the URL Bar in the browser, the Search screen in the Market, and the voice commands on the home screen.

- Back: This is the really big win. Having a constant way to have the phone go back to wherever you were previously is huge, especially given Android's "intent" system. Twitter -> Browser -> Mail Client -> Incoming SMS, and to get back to Twitter I just hit the back button until I'm there.

I'm not sure I could even use an Android phone at this point that didn't have the hardware back button.

I Assume Honeycomb is a template to where the phone is headed (given Google's announced intent to merge the two OS forks and the fact that Honeycomb was branded 3.0). If that's the case you'll have all the same buttons and they'll be ever present on the screen. They'll just be Hardware instead of software.

On my Xoom the Back, Home and Application List buttons are visible in every application (as is a search button in the menu bar)

I think the idea is that the OS will always have software equivalents of those 4 buttons on the bottom of the screen, so you'll always be able to do the things you mentioned. You won't get nice tactile cues, though, which makes me like the hardware buttons.

On phones like the Nexus One and Nexus S, the "hardware keys" are raelly just an extension of the touch screen, so the phone uses "haptic feedback" to vibrate the phone when you trigger those keys. I actually like it even better than the hardware keys on my old G1 or on any of my friends' phones since then.

Extension in that they are "smooth", but physically, they are separate pieces of hardware (the light intensity of each can be set independently for instance).

I used to assume the same thing (I love the buttons on my N1!) until I used a Gingerbread tablet for awhile.

The software "buttons" on a Gingerbread tablet are pretty much identical to the capacitive buttons on most Android phones, but they have the advantage of rotating with the tablet. Turn it any direction: sideways, upside down, etc. and all the buttons are still in the same relative location. It's nice actually.

My experience with my Nexus S is that the few times the UI freezes, neither the physical mechanical buttons nor the physical capacitance buttons help any. I can either wait a while, or hard reboot and wait longer.

You can see their logic though. Even one button means you have to give up a whole inch with of space on the phone. I don't see Google removing the side buttons (assuming the Motorola Xoom is where the phone is headed in terms of button design). So you should always be able to do a hard reset if nothing else.

For the record I can see Google's point but I agree with you. The irony of the Xoom is the ever present software buttons take up as much room as the hardware buttons do.

The benefit though is that when you rotate the screen, the back and home buttons are still at the bottom of the UI. You can use the Xoom in any orientation and the buttons will always be where you want them.

Another benefit is that manufacturers can't screw with the button order.

The major place I miss a hardware button is to end calls. If the software is just slow (not frozen), it can lead to awkward trying to hang-up sounds for the other party.

With Android, under Settings -> Accessibility, you can select that the power button ends the call. I find this very useful, as it gives me a hardware button to use to end a call.

I like the idea of no buttons and I've been waiting for it for a year now. It means no wasted physical space, and depending on how they implement the virtual ones, they might not even occupy screen space all the time, but just activate on demand.

The physical home button is my favourite feature of the iPhone compared to Android phones. I fight with the Android soft keys every day...

Some manufacturers still make a physical hardware button; the Galaxy S2 for example.

Personally, I find the iPhone home button to be the worst feature of its design. Now that I have a Nexus S, seeing that bit giant hole of a button reminds me of its 5 year old design.

The nice thing about no hardware buttons is you don't need to worry about them failing.

What fails more frequently: hardware buttons rated at a hundred million presses, or software written in Java?

In the case of the Nexus One, the power button is a huge weak point. Mine hasn't worked in 5 months.

Yeah, Apple got this one right. No matter what you do with your phone, you can just press the big black button and everything is back to normal. If anything, I think these software buttons will lead to further user frustration.

There will be software buttons, so even if an app freezes, the home button will not. Unless Android itself freezes, in which case the hardware home button would be just as useless.

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