Suspicious-Teach8788
Lifer
- Feb 19, 2001
- 20,154
- 20
- 81
swipe up from anywhere on the bottom buttons gets you google now (faster than long pressing). google now has a search box which will do phone-wide search of all your apps etc. so it's just a swipe a way.
Correct, but I miss the ability to search within apps, to use the in-app search feature. That's not the phone-wide search.
In foursquare I want to be able to quickly hit search and bring up the search dialog box instead of having to move my fingers to the top and go to the page that allows me to search for venues. Or take Yelp for instance. Or Maps.
The phone is big enough that I don't want to keep shifting my hands back and forth. That's what causes people to drop phones--when moving around.
I realize they're promoting Google Now heavily, but ditching in-app search for that seems impractical. That's why I still view the Search button as useful from old 4-button devices. 1 press for in-app search, long press for Google Now Search. Samsung phones kept in-app search AND voice search (was it double tap versus long press)?
Another thing I noticed is the Menu button's inconsistency in location. In Apex Launcher, Messaging, Play Store, it shows up at the top. On apps like Facebook, it shows up at the bottom. Your 3 main buttons are still spaced evenly but they insert a menu button at half spacing or something. Placement wise that's better, but honestly it looks out of place because the spacing's messed up. I prefer bottom versus top for the menu button placement, but perhaps Google needs to go with a consistent approach.
For what's worth, I never once accidentally pressed the home key when going for the space bar on my Galaxy Nexus, nor on the Nexus 4. I did however, accidentaly press the nav buttons on my S3 quite a bit, and on the smaller Galaxy Stellar (temporary phone) I do it multiple times a day.
But everyone on this board is clamoring for "no bezel no bezel." The Galaxy Nexus had a fat bottom bezel and coupled with the on screen buttons yeah the buttons were absurdly high up. The S3 tried to minimize bezel, and quite honestly it's more cramped than the S2 or S1 phones. You can tell based on the ugly shape of the home button. But if we're going for no bezel, your argument kinda then becomes useless as you're relying on a fat bezel to keep your buttons away from the bottom.
If you had a fatter bezel for capacitive buttons to push them up, you'd end up with the same thing. I just don't like how my 4.7" screen is closer to a 4.45" screen. It's only a 4.7" when watching movies. In fact I'd like to clarify a few issues I noticed on my Nexus 10. People have said that the buttons disappear or go into low profile mode or whatever. The black bar remains. The icons become dots. Great for making it less visible so I can focus on my content, but it doesn't change the fact that my effective screen size has shrunk.
Last edited: