Information collected from community Android-developers, said that smartphones will eventually have no physical buttons, and all control will be carried out using the touch screen, like in Samsung Galaxy Nexus or Nokia N9.
The Internet already appeared on the assumption that the new iPhone will not be a physical button. But it seems that Google will do it first with their smartphones - will deprive them of any controls on the front panel, except for the touch screen.
The assumption that over time will lose their Android-Smartphone navigation buttons, first appeared after the announcement of the latest operating system - Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) - and launch the first smartphone based on it - Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
The new smartphone was devoid of physical buttons on the front panel, which "moved" to the bottom of the touch screen. In addition, the buttons became three instead of four, who were present in the reference handy previous generation - Nexus S. Appropriately updated and graphical user interface platform.
Published in the official community site Android-developers Tim Bray record (Tim Bray), the lead author of this resource, confirms the supposition. In particular, his office looks at how to get rid of the button context menu, which was present exclusively on all Android-smartphone up to version 3.0 (Honeycomb).
"The Honeycomb need for physical buttons disappeared, and was presented to the class ActionBar, which became the standard solution to perform actions in a variety of applications," - writes Bray.
"In order to interact with the device was for the user nabolee simple and intuitive you have to exclude from the construction of a mobile device menu button and replace it with ActionBar». In other words, click the context menu offered to move the element ActionBar, which is the active window title of the open application.
Bray has published detailed instructions on how developers can in their applications to take into account the absence of the menu button on mobile devices that will be released in the future. He explained that if an application written for Android 2.3 or earlier, is suddenly running on a device with no buttons, the system automatically adds a context menu icon in the bottom of the screen to the right of common buttons, Ice Cream Sandwich - «back», «home "and" open applications ".
Note that the concept of device control via a touch screen, with no additional mechanical buttons have been implemented quite successfully in the smartphone Nokia N9 platform MeeGo. The interface of this system is designed so that all the actions that users are accustomed to do with the extra navigation buttons, gesture on the screen.
True, I might add that to abandon the physical keys on the case of mobile vendors do not yet fully ready (and it is unlikely to be appropriate). In all cases, require at least one button - Power button, which also serves to activate the standby mode.
