I bring this up because when Google introduced its new pill-shaped gesture area on Android P’s first public beta, it was immediately apparent that Google was not aiming to recreate the simplicity, or even the convenience, of its decade-old three-button navigation scheme. Swiping up does not, in fact, go to the home screen but to the multitasking menu. Swiping up again, and only from that in-between state, reaches the app drawer. Indeed, reaching the home screen requires tapping the pill, something that’s not at all obvious from its shape, or from precedent set by Apple and the rest of the industry.
I don’t have a Pixel or one of the other supported devices to test the new navigation scheme on, but it only makes sense that people are weary whenever big changes to core parts of a UI like these are made. People were up in arms over the removal of the home button on the iPhone X, but it took me less than hour to get used to, and Android P will be no different.
I suspect you meant wary, but in this case, weary works equally well.
> Even today, we have companies like OnePlus, Huawei, and Motorola telling customers that to reclaim essential screen space they can master an esoteric set of finger wags that encourage platform lock-in and undermine Google’s own carefully-considered approach to Android design.
Except that you (at least for now) won’t get these gestures on third-party launchers, yeah, so much for *other OEMs platform lock-in*.
Sometimes radical UI changes are for the best. Sometimes they’re just plain dumb, look at how Microsoft had to flip-flop on Windows 8’s start button behavior. In this case I guess only time will tell.
That being said changes that require more than one gesture to obtain a certain result are not welcome from my side. Android’s pull-down menu for example now requires me to do two swipes for doing most things that previously required only one; since the second swipe is time-dependent on the first it’s often not even registered correctly when my phone is under load (like when loading an application, such as the GMail client). The pull-down menu also feels a lot less responsive because of that change.
This could be different, or it could be just as bad.
as a vehicle to see how many hyperactive animated GIFs he can fit on a single page.
I definitely do not find it “incredibly inconvenient” to swipe down on the right side of the notch for Control Center and from the left side for Notifications. Where else does one put a gesture for such things when the bottom of the screen is used for the incredibly useful Home swipe, or swiping right for the Back function, or swiping up and right for the App Switcher? There are only so many swipe-ish gestures one can do on a screen until things get too complicated, and that’s just not Apple’s way.
Anyway, I have been using the new gestures on my Pixel and I don’t think they are too bad. It is a little tedious to have to swipe up twice to get to the App Drawer, but it’s not a deal-breaker by any means, and as the author says, things will be further tweaked as input and testing goes along. It’s a decent start.