One of the more controversial changes in Android Pie was the replacement of the three navigation buttons with the two button system that included navigation gestures. Now it looks like Google may change them again in Android Q.
The folks at XDA Developers have gotten hands on a very early pre-release build of Android Q and have been testing it out, slowly revealing to everyone what is new in Android Q, at this stage. XDA have found two changes to Google’s navigation gestures in Android Q.
Android Pie’s gestures removes the recents button but for some reason retains the back button. The pill slider only slides to the right of centre and not to the left. XDA have found that, after enabling experimental gestures, the back button is removed. The pill slider now slides to the left to go back, a much better and cleaner solution (although I still prefer OnePlus and OPPO’s button-less navigation system).
With this enabled the folks at XDA have also found much smoother animations when sliding the pill to the right to go back to the previous app. The cycling through the recents apps is also smoother and if slid right while on the launcher all recent apps are cycled through in a continuous gesture.
Check out the video below that they have made showing all these new changes — XDA Developer’s Editor in Chief, Mishaal Rahman, has done a fantastic job with this video and the Android Q investigations so I encourage you to check out the video and all his other work.
The new gesture system is not expected to arrive in the first Developer Preview expected in just a couple of weeks but instead the second Developer Preview to be released at Google I/O as it was last year. You never know though. Google may think we’ve already had enough practice with basic gestures and it’s time for the next iteration.
Get your Pixel phones ready for that first Developer Preview in a few weeks time so you can be one of the first to check it out. I know I will be.
What’s wrong with the simple 3 button setup? It’s very intuitive.
This silly pill thing is unnecessary and is overly complex; basically trying to fix what isn’t broken.
Finally I can use guesture nav with a 3rd party launcher without the stupid back button being there constantly!
I have to admit I prefer the dedicated back button, hope they don’t remove that in Q