The case for a single, unified gesture navigation system for smartphones

From my point of view as someone who reviews all sorts of phones and switches between devices quite often, I can easily see how various approaches to gesture navigation differ. And I have been thinking about how I am yet to see a perfect implementation of a gesture navigation interface, which is quite sad. So... let me first walk you through the way different companies do gestures, with all the pros and cons of each approach, and then I will try to convince you that a universally agreed gesture interface would be the best thing that can happen to the industry and for the users.

Gesture navigation on a smartphone first appeared many years ago with the Palm Pre in 2009. The phone launched with webOS, a completely new take on a mobile operating system, and other Palm phones later on also ran on it, but for one reason or another those devices never took off and all the great ideas from back then disappeared for a good 9 years or so. We will not go back in time that far, but let's just say that Palm and webOS truly were ahead of their time with gestures, and we ought to keep that in mind. 

A full 9 years after the original Pre, gestures returned with a bang. Apple was the first modern smartphone maker to reinvent gestures with the iPhone X and all the rest took notice. The gesture navigation that you can now use on the iPhone X, XS, XS Max and XR stands out with its speed, fluidity and refinement that others cannot quite match yet. It's impressive to see how everything runs in buttery smooth 60fps, how you can interrupt a gesture half-way and how everything responds so quickly. However, gestures on the iPhone are not perfect in my opinion and I found these important flaws: first, the back gesture is compromised.

I like that you swipe from the side to go back, and you don't have to stretch your phone to swipe from the bottom like on many other devices, but for some reason the back gesture will work only in certain apps and not in others! For example, inside the App Store you cannot use the back gesture, but instead you have to tap on buttons to close an article and effectively go back a step. As a right-handed person, I also find it hard to reach all the way to the left side of the phone to swipe back and I really think you should be able to use a swipe from either side to go back. And do we really need to stretch all the way to the right ear on the bigger iPhones in order to see Control Center?

It took Google almost a year to match Apple and it was finally ready with its own take on gesture navigation in the Android 9 Pie release in the fall of 2018. And it was and still is... a complete disaster! Google's gesture implementation is not really a true gesture navigation at all. It's a weird mix: you have a gesture to go to the home screen, but you have no gesture to go back a step, and you still have that button. So rather than freeing up space on the screen from navigational buttons, you still have buttons and gestures on top of that! The problem with this is that once you start swiping from navigation, when you have to tap, it feels like something breaks the fluidity of the interface. And that's exactly what's happening with Google's implementation. It's chaotic, it's a mess, and it's no wonder that other Android phone makers are doing something completely different rather than adopting Google's gesture interface.

Samsung is only now starting to adopt a gesture interface, almost a year and a half after Apple, so it should have had the time to perfect it, right? Well, not really. Samsung's gesture navigation consists of three gestures and all of them involve a swipe from the bottom, while the side of the phone is not used for gestures at all. The problem with this is that, first, the space at the bottom of the phone for swiping feels cramped, and second, that it's physically hard to stretch your finger to swipe from the bottom and it breaks the fluidity that is one of the fundamental benefit of gestures. My wish is that Samsung used the sides of the phone for gestures, rather than ignore that part of the phone entirely.

LG still does not have a gesture interface!

That's how late it is to the game. Hopefully, the company will introduce it with its upcoming LG G8 ThinQ flagship that we expect to see in less than a month!

Huawei has been one of the first Android phone makers to adopt a gesture navigation interface and one that is among our favorites. My favorite part of Huawei's gestures is that you can swipe from both sides of the phone to go back a step and this works in all apps, universally! This is great! Other gestures on Huawei phones are also quite logical: swipe up from the bottom to go to the home screen, and swipe up and pause to see recent apps in a card view. My issue with Huawei's gestures is the jittery animations. You notice this the more you use these phones, and while it's not a dealbreaker, it's definitely an annoying "feature".