natehoy
Well-known member
- Sep 2, 2011
- 2,667
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I didnt explain that properly....I mean in the area below the screen that is current empty on GN and N4. It would be cool if manufacturers added a 48 pixel high screen there to house the onscreen buttons.
I know, I was being a smarty.
Seriously, though, running a second screen would require a lot more hardware (two video cards), and leave you with a strip of dedicated screen where it could just have been part of the main screen in the first place. If they are going to go to the trouble of extending glass down there, just expand the whole screen down there and call it a love story.
Plus, then you'd have the buttons always on a fixed, short side of the screen. The whole point of eliminating the dedicated buttons was to put them on the screen so they could stay on the "bottom" whether you were in portrait or landscape.
With my Nexus 7, I frequently find myself reaching for the volume control and realizing it's at the bottom left in portrait instead of the top right. The entire operating system has been quietly compensating for the fact that I'm holding it upside down!
EDIT TO ADD: One clumsy compromise is extending the glass and touch sensor but not the actual display down to a dedicated area and screen-printing on a common set of buttons. That's how my HTC Thunderbolt works. And I like the new way better.