Wait, are we really at the point where physical buttons are viewed as a revolutionary feature?
Smartphones are in such a sorry state that a single hardware button seems like a big deal.
Huh? In the exact same place on this Pixel and my last three Pixels is the Power button, Double tapping the Power Button on my Android phone opens the camera. Press and hold to talk to Assistant. Hold a long time to open Emergency and eventually call 911 automatically. It’s been a option for a long time. It would be nice if Google made these use assignable actions but they already exist.
This is what I don’t get. Well obviously they want to push usage of their own services, but shortcut stuff like this should always be customisable. To a degree I even understand it for assistant, but why would you want to push the usage stats of the camera app? Android has been about choice for such a long time, but they have been fucking this up for so many years now, letting Apple get the points here.
Samsung and Google were literally ahead with a Bixby button and the Edge Squeeze. Too bad they didn’t make it more functional than just an assistant macro. I had a rooted 2 XL and I still miss squeeze for flashlight.
On my s22+ you can double tap the power button to open up the camera or any app that you’d like automatically.
Motorola shake flashlight was the best. Just a quick chop chop and you’d have a light
I now have a little flashlight button on my lock screen I can slide to turn on the flashlight. Not as convenient but way better than not having it there.
so like Samsung had the Bixby button for half a decade now? No, thanks.
also, a mute button is pointless when we can just hold the volume down for a second.
The Bixby button sucked because for so long you couldn’t remap it to do anything else. And even when they finally relented at the end, they only allowed it to have the functions of press and hold or double tap to activate extra features, but single tap was always still reserved for Bixby.
Having a dedicated mute button is good when your default volume controls are for media volume. Not that it makes a difference for me because my phone is forever on vibrate, but I get the utility.
You could always just download an app to remap it with far more functionality. Used to love that feature.
Yes, but you had to set up Bixby first which I refused to do, so just cut off the part of my phone case that pushed the button so I’d stop accidentally pressing it.
The mute toggle on iPhone doesn’t mute media if you play something with it enabled, and you can still increase/decrease the volume of that, you just don’t get any notification sounds. So bit different than just turning the volume down for the whole device.
I keep mute enabled all the time because I get the notifications on my watch, and I forget it’s on because media still plays with sound. It’s actually really nice. One of the few things I actually like about iPhone.
That’s just the lock/power button, I think. Press to lock or wake, double tap for camera, hold to turn off/restart.
The Bixby button was a bit different, and lived on the opposite side of the phone from the power button.
