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Comment by Toutouxc | Hacker News Reader

IMO it's fine. I had a Galaxy S9 a few years ago for two weeks (had to return it because of hardware issues) and it felt nice to use, smooth and modern. I've used many kinds of phones in my life, dumb phones, Symbian, Windows on PDAs and smartphones, Android from 1.6 up until now, and even though I'm firmly team Apple at this moment, I have to say that not having a dedicated "back" button or gesture and only occasionally showing a "back" arrow in the top-left corner (i.e. the one you can't reach one-handed) really stands out among the stupid UI decisions I've seen. Yes, iOS is fast and polished, it's just that pretty often I'm not sure how I got somewhere and how to get out.

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Swiping left to right from the leftmost edge of the phone onto the screen will execute the "back" function with or without the presence of a "back" arrow at the top-left corner.

Not on iOS, which I believe OP is referring to. On Android you can swipe back. But I just tried this on my iPad and it does not work. For the longest time I never even _noticed_ that "<back" link in the upper-left corner!

As an iOS app dev, swipe to go back definitely works on native iOS apps. If you find an app it doesn’t work in it’s probably an app built in whatever cross platform UI framework which doesn’t implement the gesture.

Additionally, one can always swipe the bottom bar to switch between apps.

Even native iOS apps have some terribly inconsistent back behaviour, particularly when handling overriding swipe functions.

Eg Photos seems to change Back on almost every view. Swiping back navigates around albums and locations and such. Until you open a photo, then it flicks between individual photos. If you are looking at a photo and want to return to album view you need to click the Back arrow at the top left. If you swiped up to view photo details and want to go back to the photo, you need to swipe down. If you are Adjusting photo details, you need to click Cancel at the top left. If you are editing a photo and want to go back to the photo, you need to click Cancel, which is at the bottom left this time.

The only place I don't notice a back button in Photos is the top right. But that's exactly where Books puts it.

On Android, every single one of navigations would be performed by the dedicated back button/swipe. Which might explain why the iOS Google Photos app seems to just stick with a top-left back button on almost all views.

You definitely can swipe back on iOS, I do it all the time and AFAIK it's the primary recommended way to go back. You have to swipe from the edge though.

Yes it does on iOS, it might just be that you misunderstand how the mechanic works. Swiping back will never exit you out of an application. But for example if you go Settings → General → About and then swipe back two times you'll end up back on the Settings screen.

iOS happily kills backswipes with inconsistent alternatives.

eg View details in Photos, and swiping back doesn't work. But there are also no back buttons or visual cues. But there are 3 ways to get out of that screen AFAIK, which some might label intuitive. But if you go one step deeper and Adjust the photo details, the only exit is a Cancel button.

You can't swipe across the opposing screen edge with your thump without letting go of the full grip on the phone and holding it only partially, risking it to fall. Glass phone body only makes things much worse. You can do it with a back button in a sane position though, without compromising a grip. Android allows navbar gestures since ver.10 and I never enable them because buttons are simply better, even though they take away some space on the screen.

I switched to iPhone 13 Mini because there's no recent and small Android phone anymore. On the Mini, you can easily reach that screen edge. Which just drives home the point that those gigantoscreens are a bad idea.

Dropped my iPhone 13 around 4-5 times, on the floor, in the bathtub without water, on the desk. Not even a scratch. I was afraid of the glass back but this thing _is_ sturdy. "Risking to fall" was a good reason about 4-5 years ago, but since then the devices got much better protected from falling IMO

I was saying the same thing until one fall proved it wrong. You can be unlucky and break the back with what looks like a minor fall.

Just broke the back of my phone two hours ago from a low height. In a Tech21 case as well. Glad I paid for the super AppleCare+++.

but now they added this task switcher to iPad which also appears when dragging from the left edge, and now going back is like rolling a dice. you don't know how how to go back without triggering the task switcher so it ends up taking multiple attempts to go back without the OS consuming the input

you can disable stage manager. i believe it is off by default

I was actually looking forward to this coming to iOS, but it’s one of the things that work great until they suddenly don’t. Back from a photo in Photos? Swipe down or top left corner. Hide the keyboard? Middle right. Back from someone’s profile in Messages? Swipe down or top right. Back from a PDF in Files? No swipes, just top right. Some of these do make sense if you follow closely how the UI elements fly onto the screen, but are confusing if you don’t.

Dedicated back and home button is the reason why I always buy a refurbished Galaxy S7 after I break/lose it. This is my third is six years. I like that the price to pay to maintain the same experience actually goes downwards. Who knows how long it will keep working like that? Hopefully I will be able to put lineageOS or postmarketOS on it when the software eventually stops working. Maybe some day I get to be an amazing linux hardware programmer like Caleb Connolly and am able to mainline S7 support in linux like he did for the SnapDragon 845, whatever that means

> Who knows how long it will keep working like that? Hopefully I will be able to put lineageOS or postmarketOS on it when the software eventually stops working.

You'll be fine, if I break my current phone, my next one will be a Galaxy S4 as well, some people do run Android 12 on it nowadays, the battery is replaceable and the phone is so cheap used that it's not even worth worrying about.

As a leftie, I really appreciate that on Android you can pull in from the rightmost edge too.

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