Are Capacitive Touch Buttons On Their Way Out?

[chaseman28]

I'm noticing that more and more phones have on-screen home, back and menu buttons. I understand that this was part of Ice Cream Sandwich's synthesis of the formerly divergent phone and tablet OSs. Obviously, capacitive touch buttons are a little silly on a tablet but I still like them on phones. I'm worried that Google actually prefers on-screen buttons (see: Galaxy Nexus, "LG Nexus", and the new crop of Motorola phones). This wouldn't be such a problem except for the fact that Google looks like it will be taking more control over Android with it's rumored changes to the Nexus program. Is the writing on the wall? Does anyone else think that Google is going after capacitive touch buttons?

 

[paul-c]

I think that some of the OEMs have turned the page on capacitive buttons. I think going forward, it looks like Motorola and Sony are just going to use on screen buttons. Motorola is owned by Google, and Sony tries to stay in line with what Google is trying to do with Android. Samsung, HTC, and LG seem to still like the capacitive buttons. Hell, Samsung is even going with a physical home button on alot of their phones as of late. Their are definitely some OEMs that will keep the capacitive buttons alive, even though a few seem to be done with them.


Sent from my Panasonic ELUGA

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

Google is still ok with capacitive buttons.