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Comment by zbowling | Hacker News Reader

There is no more hardware back button on any recent android phone either and every time you rotate the screen it's in a different locations (and a different location if it's on landscape vs portrait on tablets vs phones.) It's widely inconstant on Android too. And what happens when you press also is not very consistant when what you are working isn't inherently stack based.

Also having different UI contentions doesn't mean someone else is doing something wrong. We port games from iOS to Android at Apportable (YC2011) so we deal with converting concepts every day. Neither is better or worse.

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> There is no more hardware back button on any recent android phone either...

Any?

While the Galaxy Nexus has onscreen navigation controls now (and the Nexus7 followed suit), both the One X and the Samsung Galaxy SIII have dedicated capacitive back buttons "off screen". On the OneX the button is in the normal place (on the left) and is oddly (but in keeping with the SII) on the right on the SIII.

You can still support it sure, but the recommendation from google is to move away from them on phones. IIRC (don't quote me) on tablets, it's a requirement.

There was never any such recommendation. The back button is an essential android feature.

It might not be hardware anymore, but there is still a ubiquitous back button. And depending on how you look at it, the rotation change could be a good thing - the intention is to keep the ubiquitous button set closest to where your hands will be resting.

It's not though. The back button on phones stays on the top or bottom edge (the icons just rotate to face you). Which side it will be on is wild guess though depending on the phone and OEM.

Tablets will move it to the bottom in whatever orientation you are in which good but the issue with that though is that the screen dimensions change and I can't tell you how frustrating that is in games and changing their OpenGL projections on rotation. Not only do you have to handle rotating your content for the orientation, but then you have to adjust for the screen size virtually changing sizes. For some games and apps (like ZenBound) this breaks things by moving the virtual center point of the screen.

The back button is ubiquitous for each phone. Yes, it differs between manufacturers but most people only have one phone.

Irrespective of where on the bottom row it is, it's still more useful than the top left of the iPhone 5.

On my Galaxy Nexus the back button is always in the exact same physical position, which is nice because you can reflexively hit it like a hard button and you won't get caught out in cases where it's transitioning from portrait to landscape or vice versa.

Also, since Jelly Bean I can't say I've ever had an unexpected result by pressing the back button. As far as I can tell it always does The Right Thing since they got their guidelines formalized, at least with the couple dozen apps I regularly use. I have to say on balance I've been more annoyed with iPhone apps lacking necessary navigation buttons on some screens more than Android back button inconsistency.

The point is, you almost never have to reach the top left on Android, but you often do on iOS.

My post had nothing to do with Android. I personally like iOS and am sad that I won't be buying iPhone 5. My point was just that iOS's back button convention is completely at odds with the new screen size.

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