I remember my first Android device, and how it differed to the ones I have now in one major point: navigation keys. My old Motorola XT316 (a mid-range phone for Latin American markets) came with Froyo 2.2 and featured 4 TFT capacitive navigation keys: menu, home, back, and the long gone “search”. Android phones have come a long way since that OS, and since the early days of archaic UI design and choppy performance. Now we have the most beautiful and smoothest Android, and arguably one of the best Operating Systems… But there’s something that I really think has not improved all that much despite all the optimizations, and that is navigation.
While there’s always room for improvement, I do think Android has much, much bigger problems than this, like, you know, updates?
With a custom ROM I had on my old Nexus 4 (which subsequently died), I could customize the navigation keys. I had it set so when I held down the back button, the currently running application would terminate. This was EXTREMELY useful when an app would lock up and/or start misbehaving.
Now I have a carrier-locked Moto X which can’t be rooted, so this functionality is no longer available to me. If there’s anything I miss from My N4, it was this one feature. Of course, you can tap the recent apps list and kill it that way, but not as convenient. I’d also like to be able to add back the menu button. I don’t care if it sometimes does nothing when pressed.
Short press: Back, Home, Menu
Long press: Kill App, Last App, Recents
To me, that was the best, most efficient, and useful layout ever. Been using that since I rooted my LG Optimus G back in late 2013.
Unfortunately, getting that to work on Lollipop ROMs is a royal pain. You can’t add the Menu key, and you can’t change the long-press for Home (it’s Google search).
Well, at least not yet.
I have faith in the ROM devs that they’ll make it work eventually. 
The “deck” paradigm in WebOS was, without a doubt, the most intuitive and natural navigation for a touch-screen device I’ve ever encountered.
So naturally that’s the one that never made it and we’re stuck with what we have now.
Iirc, the initial internal metaphor for Android was that a of a card stack.
Each interface a user was presented with was a card on top of the stack.
The back button was flipping back down the stack.
Once memory limits were hit, the bottom “cards” where state saved and removed from ram to allow new cards to be added.
Intents worked within this, as they allowed you to mix “cards” From different apps.
Sadly they left it to the app devs to handle the behavior of the back button, and all too often exposed intents had sloppy behavior (ending up digging through a previous interaction stack rather than jumping back to the other app etc). This even within Google’s own app suite.
Then came 3.0 and Fragments. This moved one of the cards into a sidebar state when a device identified itself as a tablet, and was in landscape mode.
Fragments also brought with it the top left “up” button, and in app navigation as forever destined to be a mess.
The up button treated apps more like a book, and pressing it was to take you back to the front page.
But you also had the pre-3.0 card stack sitting in the background. Thus resulting in hitting back taking you through the whole interaction history of a app.
Somewhere during 4.x the up button was replaced with the “burger”. Pressing it brings forth the sidebar, no matter the orientation etc.
Simple, if you want updates, get a nexus.
Not always so simple, given that depending on where you live in the world they might not want to sell you one.
Add to this, some Nexus owners are still not getting the lollypop update over the air. Do a bit of googling and you’ll find a lot of Nexus owners whose devices simply will not show an update. So even Nexus is no guarantee.
Edited 2015-01-14 01:31 UTC
In such a case, you can still grab factory image from Google and flash it to Nexus without much hacking and/or voiding warranty.
Could you tell that to Google, so my Nexus 7 LTE would get the update? It is currently TWO point releases behind.
And as darknexus said, even those with devices with released updates didn’t receive OTA yet – after two months.
You didn’t read what I wrote, you read what you wanted and you replied a flamebait.
I will bite, though.
* Will it get updated? Yes.
* Did I wrote anything about “how much time it would get”? No. What I wrote is that Mobile Operators won’t update ASAP. And, in many cases (this is new), they will REFUSE to do so.
* Don’t you like OTA? Take a look at Cyanogenmod next time you buy a mobile. (This’ my flamebait reply)
Edited 2015-01-14 09:49 UTC
> You didn’t read what I wrote, you read what you wanted and you replied a flamebait.
Of course not, because I didn’t reply to you, but to someone entirely different. You were writing in different thread.
I was replying to a guy who was claiming that if I want update, I should get a Nexus. I did. Not through mobile operator, but directly from Asus. Why should some mobile operator dictate, whether should I get a Nexus update? I didn’t get my Nexus from them, my only contract relation with them is paying for a SIM card. (I can stop that, if it helps. Wifi is actually enough. I only bought LTE version, because 32GB Wifi SKU was not available).
Until Google offers one with a SD slot (never mind the dual slot phone that a company revealed during CES last week), i won’t touch a Nexus.
But then they seem hell bent on making storage handling in Android a awkward mess…
Nope. My Galaxy Nexus($600) stopped getting updates after 4.3. My Nexus7 2012 is still waiting on 5.0.
Yet my Shield tablet has already 5.01 and my HTC One m7 will hopefully get 5.01 in February.
18 months of updates for a phone or tablet is laughable. Fuck you google I have no clue what you are on about.
Is this guy really longing for a dedicated search button, like the one that makes all windows phone users swear at least 5 times a day?
“While there’s always room for improvement, I do think Android has much, much bigger problems than this, like, you know, updates?”
Or like a proper low latency audio. Although they made some steps in the right direction with Lollipop, Android still isn’t up on par with iOS when it comes to low latency audio.
Quote: “[…] I do think Android has much, much bigger problems than this, like, you know, updates?”
I don’t think so. Android (the OS) has no problem of such kind. It’s opensource, get the code and fix it.
Maybe you wanted to say Mobile Companies whom do stupid and dangerous changes to Android and forbid to use the stock Android ROM are *actually* the problem; and refuse to update ASAP?
It’s like saying that you buy a Dell PC where Dell have removed “Windows Update” and they refuse to push the updates for you; hence you blame Windows instead.
Edited 2015-01-14 07:42 UTC
“I don’t think so. Android (the OS) has no problem of such kind. It’s opensource, get the code and fix it. ”
You gotta be kidding me, right?
Those are the answers that are given just to cover up some stupid bug or thing that does not work in an good way.
That is not an valid answer for 99.99% of all people that have bought an android phone, that might work for a handful of people that knows what they are doing.
No, you’re the one kidding me. You (or anyone else) have the source to fix it.
How many times have you cried out loud for OLD versions of OS stopping having fixes? (ie Windows, MacOS X). Here, you have the code to fix, there nope.
There’s no phone running 4.x that can’t run 5.x. Again, I quote myself: blame “[…] Mobile Companies whom […] refuse to update ASAP”. If they were using opensource drivers and stick to AOSP, there were no problems at all. So, again, it’s not the OS, it’s the Mobile Companies (and their wrong changes to the OS).
Edited 2015-01-14 09:26 UTC
I have an Android tablet that I cannot update. As far I know (not an expert), the reason is neither Android nor the company behind the tablet. It seems that the problem is that the company that makes the SoC has not released new drivers and they are proprietary. My tablet is in 4.2 and will never have updates for these reason.
Open source is not the answer here, I’m afraid.
Javier
The basic problem across the board, and why RMS advocates for free software, not open source.
Much the same was seen during the XP to Vista transition, as MS introduced a new driver framework. End result was that people found they could no longer use perfectly functional printers etc, as the XP drivers could not be used with Vista.
Care to share the tablet details? which SoC f.ex.?