One of the defining elements of the iPhone X, aside from that "notch design", is the fact that there isn't a physical Home button on the front of the handset. This is an element of the iPhone that has been present right out of the gate for the smartphone, so its departure is certainly noteworthy.
But not just because the button is gone, either. What Apple replaced it with was also catching plenty of attention back in September, and again in November when the phone launched: All those new gestures. For folks who used webOS back in the day, it might not have felt completely ridiculous, but for the longstanding iOS holdouts, it is admittedly quite the change.
I am personally a big fan of the gestures on the iPhone X, just as I was with webOS way back when. I'm all for more webOS in my life, any way that I can get it.
The iPhone X's gestures came back into the news cycle yesterday, thanks to OnePlus. The smartphone manufacturer is rolling out an option for OnePlus 5T owners (it's currently in beta, so not available to the general public) to remove the standard Android navigation buttons, and instead opt to use gestures that are very, very similar to Apple's implementation.
Sliding up from the middle of the screen gets you Home, and pausing after sliding up will open the app switcher. Swiping up from the bottom left or bottom right of the display will get you to go back. In practice the gestures look pretty intuitive, and I imagine that OnePlus 5T owners in the future that adopt the functionality will like it.
OnePlus hopping on that gesture bandwagon led a lot of folks to go back-and-forth on whether or not it's a good idea. Should other companies copy Apple in this same way?
Like I said above, I'm a fan of gestures and while I wouldn't normally say that any company should outright copy another, I am all for more gestures being adopted into smartphones.
I think Android might have a bit of a bonus, though, compared to iOS. After all, if you want the previous standard of operating iOS, with the Home button, you can't get the iPhone X. However, if you want the standard for operating Android on the OnePlus 5T, you can just turn that option on and the gesture navigational controls are gone. You can switch back-and-forth as you see fit.
Options are a good thing, to be sure. And I can see why someone would prefer that over just having one thing. "Adopt or switch platforms" is pretty rough. I know I wouldn't know what I'd do if I actually hated the iPhone X's gestures. After all, this is the future of iOS.
But, it got me wondering. Do you think gesture navigational controls are the future of smartphones in general? Should more Android manufacturers adopt this method like OnePlus is currently testing? Or should Android just stick to its buttons? Let me know!
