ICS buttons vs. capacative buttons

[Stuntman]

That's not true at all, on your phone if you watch a video and play a game in fullscreen it is not visable, on honeycombe it' is always there, it is always visable.

When watching a video, the soft buttons dim, so they do not appear intrusive. They light up again when you touch the screen.

 

[Saltine713]

I love the capacitive buttons. And yes there is a huge difference if they are not on the screen.

I would much rather have the buttons than on-screen stuff.

 

[Martimus]

That's not true at all, on your phone if you watch a video and play a game in fullscreen it is not visable, on honeycombe it' is always there, it is always visable.

Actually that's not always true either... if I run a Youtube video full screen on my XOOM (on the most current releases of Honeycomb and Youtube) the soft buttons disappear until I touch the screen once to bring back the controls. When the controls disappear so do the soft buttons.

My guess is that the controls can be displayed or hidden by the active program if the active program was written using the applicable Honeycomb API's...

 

[eddiesox]

I think the search button is gone because there's now a search bar on every screen. I'm not too thrilled with that as I think it will drive manufacturers to make bigger and bigger screens. I have nightmares of going to the store one day in the future and find that all phones offered are 5-6" or more and require two hands just to operate. In the future, due to antenna issues and people wanting 3-4 TB of space and 16 cores of processor power, phones will require a backpack with an antenna on it that you will carry around. You will get awesome reception though and your phone will fly.

Yup. Not all of us want a combination Xbox, slr, computer, tablet for a phone. That's why I have seperate devices to fufil those requirements. As to the debate of physical and capacative, I don't really care as long as there are 4 buttons and not one is on screen, I've had phone with capacitive and a phone with hard keys, both work great (as far as the keys go) and a xoom with the on screen stuff. On screen only buttons deter me from a device as important as my cell phone because should I need to use it quickly and the phone is slow or buggy (samsung.....) then I'm kind of screwed. I love all of the specs on the prime except for the lack of buttons... grrr. Hopefully HTC will make a couple is phones sans sense with aluminum bodies that have buttons.

 

[eddiesox]

Especially on low end phone that are often buggy enough as it is

 

[eddiesox]

Sorry that this isn't one giant post but I just remembered I read something about an android tabket that had "rotating" capacative buttons. Something to do with prisims and such. Something like this would solve any problems encountered when in landscape.

Nevrmind. I guess it was a phone. Here's the link.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/18/htc-incredible-s-auto-rotating-buttons-explained-video/