Android phones feature a set of hardware buttons across the bottom: Back, Menu, Home, and Search (not necessarily in that order). Home functions like the iPhone button of the same name, ripping you back to the “desktop” screen. Search gives you a global search which grabs at contacts, apps, emails, and other data functioning like a (slow) double click of the iPhone Home button. Menu is actually rather clever, it functions as a neat way to hide a set of contextual commands offscreen. The problem I have is with the Back button, not so much its existence but its implementation.
The issue is inconsistent function, that is, when I press the Back button more than once it’s hard to know where it will take me. The reason for this is rooted in the philosophy behind Android’s app management and multitasking. On Android you can open an app and then open another app while the first remains open. This creates the possibility of going back to the first app. But Android doesn’t actually see apps, rather it sees parts of apps called activities. An activity is a small part of an app, for example message composition might be an activity in a twitter client app. The Back button takes you back not to your last app but your last activity. As you move from app to app your chain of activities flows behind you like the light off a Tron motor bike. The Back button can take you back through those screens. Sometimes however I want to go back in an application’s local sequence (from compose message to contacts list for example) and end up instead moving back globally and out of my application altogether.
The issue is inconsistent function, that is, when I press the Back button more than once it’s hard to know where it will take me. The reason for this is rooted in the philosophy behind Android’s app management and multitasking. On Android you can open an app and then open another app while the first remains open. This creates the possibility of going back to the first app. But Android doesn’t actually see apps, rather it sees parts of apps called activities. An activity is a small part of an app, for example message composition might be an activity in a twitter client app. The Back button takes you back not to your last app but your last activity. As you move from app to app your chain of activities flows behind you like the light off a Tron motor bike. The Back button can take you back through those screens. Sometimes however I want to go back in an application’s local sequence (from compose message to contacts list for example) and end up instead moving back globally and out of my application altogether.
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