Will HTC's attempt to pioneer the use of physical buttons in mobile phones be completely eliminated?
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My experience with touch screen phones for so many years tells me that physical buttons are more reliable. In the movie "Terminator" series, Skynet, an artificial intelligence supercomputer created by humans, awakens itself, regards humans as a threat, and sends Terminators to destroy the savior... In order to prevent such a thing from happening, humans must retain the physical disconnection or restart switch, and the lifeblood of the device must be in the hands of humans. You can see that Ultraman's transformation device is not a touch screen, which shows that humans have a deep love and trust for physical buttons in their bones. The question of whether the physical buttons on mobile phones will disappear has been discussed for a long time. The trend we have seen in recent years is that there are fewer and fewer physical buttons on mobile phones. But this does not mean that physical buttons will eventually disappear on mobile phones. Humans have a very strong desire to control things. To satisfy the precise control of things, it is necessary to require things to have a precise feedback. Whether it is a simple button that bounces slightly or a light click, it can give people a wonderful feeling. At present, pure touch cannot provide good feedback to satisfy people's control sense, so physical buttons will exist for some time. In a nutshell, there is an insurmountable gap between virtual keys and physical keys in terms of feel . Otherwise, do you think playing games on a touch screen can be compared with a controller? Before the iPhone appeared, the physical keys on smartphones occupied nearly half of the space. Full-keyboard smartphones represented by BlackBerry represent a highly efficient and comfortable input experience, and were once popular all over the world. But unfortunately, the physical keyboard of smartphones soon became a victim of market changes. Many people still don’t understand whether it is really the right thing to give up the physical full keyboard? However, "children only see right and wrong, and adults only see pros and cons." People began to buy mobile phones that they could recognize. The reason why physical keyboard phones are unsalable may not have much to do with large screens, but because of the trend of people pursuing "benchmark" devices (those with gorgeous designs and overwhelming advertisements). People came to the store after seeing the advertisements, hoping to buy an iPhone that is more stylish than the standard. This is similar to the popularity of OPPO and vivo mobile phones in China today. In other words, the physical keyboard lost to the full touch screen not in the input experience, but in other places . In addition to the market changes mentioned above, there is another aspect of behavior. The new generation of young people grew up with touch screen phones. They have never experienced the feel of physical keyboards. In addition, the importance of text communication in this era is far less than before. Why spend time typing long paragraphs of text when an expression, a voice or a short video can explain it clearly? It turns out that it is difficult to operate a phone with your hands in your trouser pocket to call for help when you are hijacked by criminals. Of course, you can't secretly type love words to your goddess in class... In addition, most mobile phone manufacturers spare no effort to eliminate physical buttons for the following two reasons: First, in terms of design, thinness and large screens are gradually becoming a trend. Obviously, whether it is a BlackBerry-style full keyboard or a Motorola or Nokia-style side-sliding full keyboard, as well as various navigation keys and media keys, they not only occupy a certain amount of screen space but also increase the weight of the body . Moreover, the life of physical keys is obviously not as good as that of virtual keys, so many iPhone users will call out small dots to replace the Home button. Secondly, in terms of cost control, the profit margin of the mobile phone market is constantly compressed . It is always easier to add an interaction to the UI than to design a physical button in a thin body. This is why so many mobile phone manufacturers prefer to choose to build in the three virtual keys. Countless innocent souls have been beheaded. With the addition of more and more functions to mobile phones, the internal space of mobile phones is constantly squeezed. In addition to the physical keyboard, there are also independent camera keys, 3.5mm headphone jacks, and even breathing lights, SD card expansion and other practical functions that may slowly disappear from people's sight, and give way to new functions that attract the market's attention. Recently, there are three pieces of news that are almost bad news for physical buttons, because once the news comes true, it can basically declare that physical buttons will usher in the death. One is that HTC's designers accidentally leaked a device codenamed Ocean . This machine is still in a very initial stage. The biggest feature of this machine is that it completely cancels physical buttons and uses a new interactive method called Sense Touch. The side frame replaces the physical button. The system tracks the position and movement of the user's hand and then decides what operation to take, such as sliding or clicking. If the fallen aristocrat HTC is not enough, then take a look at Samsung and Apple, who are leading the times . "Boom7" brought countless losses to Samsung, so the next flagship Samsung S8 is highly anticipated. There are constant speculations about this phone. Korean media reported that Galaxy S8 may take the lead over iPhone 8, that is, removing the Home button and making the front of the phone all screen. What's more exaggerated is that Samsung wants to replace the four edges of its screen with curved screens to make it a truly full-screen smartphone. As for Apple, Apple changed the physical buttons that have been used for many years on iPhone 7 to pressure-sensitive ones, which seems to be planning to completely eliminate the Home button in the next step. Relevant news said that iPhone 8 will use the hole-free ultrasonic fingerprint recognition technology similar to that on Xiaomi 5s. Rumors are just rumors after all. Even if Apple and Samsung want to eliminate the Home button, they will not be as radical as HTC's concept phone Ocean, which even eliminates the volume button (it can be vaguely seen in the video that the top of HTC Ocean still has a power button?)? However, if it really comes to this step, it will not be far from being eliminated. I am skeptical. After all, the Xiaomi 5s, which was the first to use ultrasonic fingerprint technology, still needs to "dig a groove" for positioning . Apple may adopt an innovative way to solve the ugly problem of digging grooves. After all, Apple has ruthlessly eliminated the physical keyboard and 3.5mm headphone jack. But for Samsung, the physical Home button will not be abandoned so easily. There is a reason why Samsung has insisted on retaining the physical Home button for so many years. After a lot of research and investigation, Samsung found that physical buttons are very popular with users. It is undeniable that physical buttons do improve the convenience of users to operate devices. Whether on the move or in the dark, users can quickly locate the physical buttons and perform operations. In fact, there has been a resurgence of physical buttons in recent years. For example, many domestic mobile phones add separate "smart keys" and "joy keys" to the body, allowing users to quickly use various functions through customization. There are also many third-party peripheral manufacturers who design external physical keyboards for iPhones. In order to please business users who are obsessed with the feel of keyboards, Samsung launched physical keyboard accessories when Galaxy S6 Edge and Note7 were released... Although it still cannot cover up the fact that physical buttons are declining. But I believe that physical buttons will still be with us for a long time. After all, humans are used to pressing buttons, which is equivalent to writing, grasping, and holding. Without talking about the distant future when the concepts of physical and virtual have disappeared, I would like to say that if you have the ability, try to make the power button a virtual button now... As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity. |
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