An Observation About Android’s Menu Key
by Andrew CrowI’ve been using a Nexus One for a month or so now and there is one singular annoyance that continues to frustrate – the heavy reliance on the Menu button to access critical app functionality.
During SXSW, I was talking to a friend who works at Google about this issue and he pointed out something I hadn’t thought about. Turns out, this is a by-product of an evolving operating system for multiple hardware devices. While Android officially requires a touchscreen for Android devices that want to have the ability to install 3rd party apps, there isn’t much that cannot be done by navigating using hard buttons. And, if I’m not mistaken, it wasn’t until Android 2.0 that more softkey functionality was made available.
So, you have a philosophy of supporting multiple versions of hardware and, because of this, not every combination of SW and HW are perfectly matched.
My reaction to this is, yeah, that makes sense. But, every time I have to tap multiple times to get to something in that Menu area, I find it frustrating.
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March 17th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Oh yeah, so this is a new thing for our blog. We’re thinking or trying to post more observations or little things that pop into our heads. Honestly, there’s concern that with so many people reading this, we have to have perfectly well-formed, well-thought out opinions on ideas. This bite-sized approach might help stimulate more conversation.
So, bear with us as we try this out. I’m looking forward to challenges to my post above. Or, better yet, some additional information about the topic.
March 17th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
You know, another great example of this is the Blackberry Storm. I was not a huge fan of the Blackberry OS to begin with, but when they switched to a touch screen for the Storm they basically just made the on-screen buttons bigger, which just made the problems in the OS bigger. At some point the problems of software made to use hardware keys outweigh the benefits of a touch interface. The Storm passed that point, but it sounds like Android hasn’t.
March 24th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Andrew, the droid was my first Android device and this design *choice* JUMPED right out at me. I remember opening up the gmail app for the first time and just seeing a list of emails with no controls. “Where is the UI?! Ah yes, buried in a menu. Fantastic.” What pains me, is that when I open up my fav google web app (reader) this is turned on its head. Not only are there hardware UI legacy issues around android apps, but googles mobile web apps feel entirely different. Challenging stuff.
April 4th, 2010 at 8:22 am
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