Android 10 Q may bring swipe from side gesture to augment the back key

The days when you had to root, jailbreak or install third-party apps in order to avoid stretching all the way up or down while holding the phone with one hand are now gone, and every manufacturer is coping with "all-screen" phones gesture navigation in a different way. 

Apple's non-customizable but fluid and simple gestures on its notch-y iPhones take the iOS cake, while Huawei's rich set employs an innovative side-sliding one that replaces the back key as the one that forces you to stretch down most often. 

Samsung is a bit handicapped when it comes to navigation gestures, as the sides of its curved OLED displays are doing their People Edge or other duties, so busting a move from there is a toughie. It already has a pull-down and swipe-up gestures on an empty screen area to bring the notification shade from the clouds or open the app drawer, therefore the only side left for a new navigation party, is the very bottom.

That's exactly what One UI does - its gesture navigation option replaces the bottom strip with three even-spaced "pills" for home, back and recent apps, or you can hide those altogether, and only swipe by muscle memory. Samsung's Good Lock app that lets you sideload features and options to the interface now allows you to enrich the Galaxy S10 or Note 9 gesture systems. Dubbed One Hand Operation +, the plugin can assign side-swiping gestures to do a variety of things, including to serve as your back key, too.

Google's rigid gesture system gestures was trailing the manufacturer overlays in terms of features, despite the familiar back key iconography but Android 10 Q may be about to change that. A new (for stock Android, at least) side swipe to go back gesture has been unearthed in the second Android Q beta edition, and performs as demonstrated in the video above. Whether or not the side-to-back gesture will make it in the final Android 10 release, remains to be seen, though.