Android has too many buttons?

Who designs the interface of smartphones? The programmers? Hardware designers? They are actually software designers, a combination of the two jobs. However, sometimes we find elements that do not seem to make much logic. This is the case of buttons. Are there too many buttons on Android?

Today I have stopped to look at my Android mobile, and I have seen that it has many more buttons than I really need. What's more, I've realized that I don't really need any physical buttons on my mobile, and I'm going to explain why.

First of all, I don't need the volume buttons. With swiping from the top notification bar, we could easily access the volume settings just like we access the screen brightness settings. In fact, why do we have physical buttons for the volume? Just for one reason, because they already existed in old smartphones, but it doesn't make much sense that they continue to exist either. Someone could argue that sometimes, if we are watching a video, we may want to raise or lower the volume of the mobile without having to stop watching the video. However, this is not the case either, because when we modify the volume, the volume bar appears on the screen, and it covers us the video. In the end, I think the physical volume buttons are useless nowadays.

The same thing happens to me with the off button. Today there are already many mobiles whose screen can be turned on by pressing twice on it. We could turn it off anyway, and in general, it would be very easy to find some way to simply turn it off.

The Android buttons, the Home button, the back button, and the multitasking button don't even need to be mentioned. In almost all mobiles these buttons already appear on the screen. We don't need more.

Advantages of not having buttons

But it is that, in addition, there are two main advantages of not having buttons on the mobile. On the one hand, they are mechanical elements and, therefore, they are prone to breakdown and failure. If a button is damaged, we will not be able to use it well, or it will even generate a rather bad malfunction, as could happen with a shutdown button that remains blocked and that constantly restarts the mobile. The same goes for the volume buttons. If the volume up button is blocked, for example, the mobile could stop being silent when we are in a meeting.

Another advantage of eliminating mechanical elements such as buttons is the ease of building a waterproof mobile. As it is not a water inlet, the chances of water damaging the mobile are reduced, and therefore, manufacturers have fewer obstacles to build a waterproof mobile. In my opinion we already have more than enough buttons. All buttons. And manufacturers should soon try to phase them out.