Question about Ice Cream Sandwich

[DOOG9517]

Just wondering... I remember hearing that ICS would not have hardware buttons. How is this going to work on phones that are out now that are supposedly gonna be updated with ICS. My Bionic has the buttons. Every phone has buttons now. Are they going to be unused, or integrated into the OS. Has this been covered anywhere else?

 

[DOOG9517]

I mean how Honeycomb has no buttons. Home, Menu, Back, and Search.

 

[Hearthatvoiceagain]

There are some Honeycomb tablets that have buttons and the honeycomb code certainly supports them, despite the OS not requiring them. My guess is that the buttons will still work in ICS and you may even get the option to hide the on screen buttons if you have hardware ones (as they are a waste of screen real estate otherwise). Given that the on screen buttons would be fiddly below a certain screensize, if the software failed to support hardware buttons then Google would be limiting Android to only certain form factors, which doesn't seem likely.

 

[DOOG9517]

I see.

 

[BSG75]

I suppose they will hide the on-screen buttons and wire up the physical buttons so they work like before. They could also just leave both the on screen and physical buttons active I guess.

That is one reason why I am not getting a phone now because of that coming change in form factor. I don't want obsolete buttons. That's probably overly OCD on my part, though .

 

[mrmoe110]

There are some Honeycomb tablets that have buttons and the honeycomb code certainly supports them, despite the OS not requiring them. My guess is that the buttons will still work in ICS and you may even get the option to hide the on screen buttons if you have hardware ones (as they are a waste of screen real estate otherwise). Given that the on screen buttons would be fiddly below a certain screensize, if the software failed to support hardware buttons then Google would be limiting Android to only certain form factors, which doesn't seem likely.

It should be handled by the OS when it reads your "phone state." This is is how it can tell if you have a FFC and other types of hardware. If it sees that you have capacitive buttons you'll be running ICS but without hardware buttons. The leaked video of ICS on the Galaxy S show this.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[Hearthatvoiceagain]

It should be handled by the OS when it reads your "phone state." This is is how it can tell if you have a FFC and other types of hardware. If it sees that you have capacitive buttons you'll be running ICS but without hardware buttons. The leaked video of ICS on the Galaxy S show this.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Wasn't the 'leaked video of ICS on the Galaxy S' just that ICS launcher from the market?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

 

[koolkid09]

Wasn't the 'leaked video of ICS on the Galaxy S' just that ICS launcher from the market?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

I think he means the Nexus S. And I thought it was confirmed real on XDA. The video looks to be a older version of Ice Cream Sandwich because it lack some animation transitions like in the app launcher. But I believe it was real.