Hardware Buttons Will Work With Ice Cream Sandwich Update

[dgstorm]

There are many of us out there with Android devices that have hardware buttons, and are a bit concerned whether or not an eventual ICS update will stop the functionality of those buttons. The folks over at Gizmodo took the liberty of asking Google directly, and from their report, we do not need to worry. A Google representative had this to say,

ICS does have onscreen buttons but not always. If there's a device with hardware buttons the onscreen buttons won't be there, and the hardware buttons will act and function as you'd expect them to.... back and home will function as you'd expect, the search button will query the search bar (as you'd expect), and the menu button will query the menu overflow in the action bar.

Google did indicate that it won't work on some older "legacy" devices, but most folks do not need to worry about having useless buttons on their phone. Whew! That's a bit of good news.

Source: Gizmodo

 

[sc0rch3d]

it seems like they (google engineers) have thoroughly thought out multiple scenarios for current, past, and future devices that could run this software. they deserve a lot of praise for thinking of so many use cases. this is the kind adaptation/customization that developers love to have at their fingertips. who knows? you could play a game with a combination of software and hardware buttons. ics ftw!

 

[OneTenderRebel]

I mean was it ever really in question? They are not dumb, they weren't EVER going to render hard buttons or soft buttons completely useless......

 

[sc0rch3d]

I mean was it ever really in question? They are not dumb, they weren't EVER going to render hard buttons or soft buttons completely useless......

well (at least for a second) the decision google made to keep honeycomb code to themselves raised my brow. i was praying they were not going the way of the walled garden.

 

[Dave12308]

It's too bad they didn't do this with Honeycomb. I have a Dell Streak 7, and I find it distracting to have the soft buttons onscreen when there are perfectly good capacitive touch buttons on the bezel of the device. I believe there is an app in the market that will toggle them, but I feel it should have been built into the OS.

 

[Sweettooth]

Even as adaptive as ICS might be, I still would prefer if they removed hardware buttons from phones moving forward. It seems strange given how cool I used to think capacitive buttons were, that I was so let down when I saw the RAZR had them. It's really making it hard to decide whether to get it or the Nexus. Maybe a cooler phone will come along before the end of the year to pretty much knock them off the map like the short timer Bionic.

 

[Jonas]

I think hardware buttons are going the way of slideout keyboards. I would like to think there will always be a few phones out there with them, for those old die hards, but the technology is pulling away from them, so they will become obsolete. I think hardware buttons should be kept for the simple fact of when hacking, if you soft brick your phone, and can't press any buttons to launch recovery, then I guess you might be in a wee bit of trouble there.

Sent from my Banana Phone

 

[DF Smod]

I'm glad the search button is gone, in two years never once have I used it for it's intended purpose...

 

[brad92]

I hate the bottom buttons on my X anyway. They're loose and feel like they're gonna fall out.

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