Comment by generalk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by generalk | Hacker News Reader

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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 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.

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).

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