Dear. Android – Leave. The. Power. Button. Alone (opens in new tab)

> I also have issues with most map apps and using them for navigation. It seems that the UI designers for these things never consider difficulty in seeing the crucial details on a small screen at high velocities with small glances. > > I need the remaining KM until that turn, in large numbers, Google.

OsmAnd has a nice design, IMO: https://imgur.com/a/oZJIZst

It also lets you change the widgets and colorschemes, that's the LightRS map style and route line.

> I also have issues with most map apps and using them for navigation. It seems that the UI designers for these things never consider difficulty in seeing the crucial details on a small screen at high velocities with small glances.

Enshittification. I don't know what is being taught in design schools but enshittification is definitely one of its subjects. Take a look at major products and how shitty they became, with poor design decisions that are unjustified.

Google Maps switched to a Apple-like color scheme months ago. Everyone hated it, the main roads were no longer highlighted and distinguished from normal roads. Google ignored. I had to drive back to the office 2 weeks ago and my friend setup the GPS, only to be confused about the route because the streets I should take were highlighted in blue, but due to high traffic in the area they became yellow. I was confused for a few minutes thinking "okay, this is a main road, where the hell should I go?" until my friend told me it's yellow because of traffic conditions.

Honestly, I think Samsung has one of the worst android interfaces. It looks approachable, but most any activity is harder than on others that are truer to the stock experience. That said, every manufacturer has some stupid things. My Moto phone always blanks the screen when you are talking, which is great, but then makes it difficult to actually get the screen to stay on if you need to use it while talking.

>I need the remaining KM until that turn, in large numbers, Google.

One thing with maps too is that it decided to default to auto mode when using the app, but auto mode won't bring up the keyboard, which sucks if you need to make changes to your route and aren't wanting to use the voice mode.

however they did say:

That’s because, in a rush to move to touchscreens and display-based electronics, every company has let go of the simplicity of buttons.

This is kind of maddening. Tesla is the worst. Their recent cars have very. few. buttons. They have NO stalks, and what hasn't gone to the touchscreen goes to a few touch buttons in the center of the (rotating) steering wheel. They "control" turn signals, wipers, lights, etc. It guesses the gear shift (forward or back).

The iPhone at the very least always has the slide to power off feature, even before the fingerprint reader was introduced.

I think the underlying issue is that phone power buttons are “special” in that they don’t work like literally any other power button.

I do not chord key binds on my desktop with the power button. My speakers, TV, router, etc will only ever turn off/on when I hit the power button.

It overrides a fairly rational user assumption: that “the power button” is responsible for controlling whether the device is on or off, and that that is its primary function.

They would probably fare better if they switched to calling it a Meta key (or something else that doesn’t invoke Facebook). Meta+VolumeDown to shut down makes more sense than Power+VolumeDown; the latter makes me wonder why the power button alone isn’t enough.

Overall, there really just aren’t enough context-free inputs on mobile phones. Apps generally use the whole screen, so all your non-app-specific inputs have to be put on weird chords of the 3-ish physical buttons a mobile phone has.

Me neither.

If anything, a combination seems like the better option when we’re talking a feature that is almost never used triggered by exposed buttons on a device that spends most of its life in people’s pocket.

If I accidentally turned my phone off in my pocket as often as I seem to accidentally hit buttons on my car key fob, it’d drive me fucking bonkers.

The extra button presses the once or twice a year (if that) I intentionally turn my phone off is really not much of an inconvenience, comparatively.

> Relegating the side button to only function as power off and nothing else is not a good default behavior

And what will be a "good default behavior" ? A button which choses its actions by the phases of the moon ? /s

I turn off my phone, when not in use (at some nights or my work phone when i'm in the office).

Short and long presses of the power button are the STANDARD ways to control the power of a device, be it a PC, phone, tablet, or even random things like my sous vide cooker or an aircraft GPS.

Reliably being able to determine and set if a device or computer is running is a critical aspect of making sure that machines serve their users. If a device is doing shitty, undesirable things, I want to know that I can quickly and easily power it all the way off. That includes if the screen becomes unresponsive or otherwise damaged.

Considering that Google Assistant (and Gemini now, I guess - the distinction isn't clear) have somehow managed to get LESS functional and useful as time has gone on, I found it extremely irritating that some promo-chasing PMs and engineers at Google tried to hijack this basic, established device control to push a garbage product which I KNOW is getting discontinued, migrated, or cancelled in the next few months.

I'm not even much of a zealot for free or pro-user software, but this is an insane idea from Google that speaks to a deep misunderstanding about how much control I think they should have over my phone.

The author acknowledges normal users rarely power off their phone; but goes on to mention that they are a tech reviewer and constantly switching phones, applying updates, restarting to reproduce glitches, etc. So it is not a real problem.

In fairness, iOS does not call it a power button anymore. iOS uses the term "side button". That's, of course, its own other problem, because the volume buttons are also on the side, but still.