The core interactive carrier of MBack is the physical Home button on the front of the mobile phone, which has the functions of pressing and touching, corresponding to Home and Back/ fingerprint recognition respectively. MBack's biggest highlight is to solve the space occupation and operation problems of the "navigation bar" criticized by people on Android phones. To put it simply and rudely, the problem of multi-layer bottom strip at the bottom of Android phone screen has been solved since then.
For this unique "regression" operation mode, Meizu calls it "revolutionary" MBack. However, whenever I hear words like "revolution" and "subversion", I always take a relatively cautious attitude. Because there are few things that can be called "revolutionary", we can't call new things "revolutionary", but we should look at how it solves problems for users.
So, why did MBack come into being? When I think about it carefully, I find that only Meizu can launch such an interactive way.
Let's first review the evolution history of Meizu mobile phone Home button.
Finally, you will find that MX5 has returned to the single entity Home button in M8 era. Of course, the Home button of MX5 is also much smarter than the Home button of M8. In addition, we also found that SmartBar existed for a while, but then it disappeared. Why is this?
Before discussing SmartBar, let's take a look at the application structure of Android:
The above is a typical Android application structure, in which the transparent top bar and bottom bar can be selected and designed according to actual needs.
After understanding the application structure of Android, let's take a look at the core design concept of SmartBar:
So what SmartBar wants to do is to pull down the buttons on the operation bar and form a SmartBar together with the Back button. Therefore, the best performance of SmartBar is as follows:
This seems to be a perfect plan, but Meizu seems to overestimate itself.
Most applications are not designed according to the specifications in Android design. Many applications just copy the design specifications of iOS, and the most plagiarized is the "tab bar" used to switch views at the bottom of the screen. Although, Google repeatedly emphasized in the pure Android chapter of Android design:
However, this still didn't play much role, and developers still stubbornly transplanted the interface of iOS. In this way, SmartBar is not compatible with "tab bar", so "double bottom bar" appears. It was at this time that users became dissatisfied with SmartBar.
In addition, the compatibility of Smartbar is not as optimistic as expected.
Although developers are not recommended to use the "tab bar" at the bottom in the Android design specification, this does not mean that nothing else will be put at the bottom. Because the bottom bar is also mentioned above, when should the bottom bar be used?
SmartBar is often not compatible with the operation buttons on the bottom bar, so there will still be a situation of "double bottom bar". In addition, some applications use custom controls on the operation bar, even if they are designed according to specifications, they are not compatible with SmartBar. Therefore, there will still be "double bottom bars" and sometimes even "triple bottom bars". However, Meizu can't help it in this case, because this will happen on the native Android.
During the period, Meizu also made a small improvement to the SmartBar. For example, reduce the height of the SmartBar to reduce the space occupation, and hide the SmartBar to avoid the double bottom bar (with sliding back). In fact, it is not so much progress as compromise. From this moment on, I knew that SmartBar would eventually be replaced.
As a result, Meizu thought hard and finally came up with a "floating ball", similar to the "auxiliary touch" of iPhone.
By clicking, double-clicking, sliding up and down, and sliding left and right, the "floating ball" can realize corresponding functions such as returning, hovering down, expanding the notification bar, and switching applications. When I saw the release of the "floating ball" function, I was lost in thought instead of cheering and clapping like the audience.
Because there are clear specifications for the design of desktop widgets in Android design:
Now, back to Meizu's "suspended ball". The gesture of sliding up and down/left and right is the same as the navigation gesture of the home screen, and it is also the same in the application interface, so there is a gesture conflict. Although Apple's "point" gesture conflicts with the desktop navigation gesture, it does not directly affect the application, but only moves the position of the "point" or expands the touch menu. Meizu's "floating ball" is not like this. Clicking or sliding will directly produce the corresponding operation effect. Therefore, "floating ball" seems to bring convenience, but it also brings more serious misoperation problems. At the same time, the "floating ball" is not visually friendly enough.
Therefore, "floating ball" can only be regarded as an auxiliary way of interaction, and it is impossible to replace it as an "orthodox" way of interaction.
So, is there a way to make the navigation interaction of Android look good and easy to use?
This time, Meizu finally gave a relatively perfect answer:
Integrating the Back key with the Home key can solve both visual and operational problems. Mobile phone applications will not have the problem that the navigation bar takes up space, nor will there be the problem of the criticized multi-layer bottom bar. Even when running full-screen applications, there will be no problem of finding the "Back" button all over the world.
Because of the appearance of MBack, everything seems perfect. However, a "strange thing" caught my attention.
Since Apple can think of double-touching the Home button to trigger the screen to hover down, why didn't it think of single-touching the Home button to trigger the "return" function? Didn't it really think of it? Is this possible? You know, the "Back" button in the upper left corner of the iPhone is also the most popular. I also believe that Apple has done some thinking when measuring the "return" function of touching the Home button and the "return" function of sliding from the left edge of the screen to the right, but finally chose the latter.
Yes, in any case, we should have the spirit of speculation.
Let's take a look first. What functions does the MX5 Home key contain?
We can find some questions: when fingerprint identification is needed, does touch represent fingerprint identification or return to the next level? At first, I thought of using touch time to judge:
Later, I slowly found that the experience of this scheme was not friendly enough. The touch duration is short enough, to what extent, to what extent, users can not quantify. In addition, when users are doing something, they may suddenly cancel it at any time. So the implementation of this plan is a bit confusing.
Meizu's solution is:
Avoiding it through UI design can only be said to be the best solution under the current conditions. I don't know what kind of UI design to use to prompt the user, whether to simply put a "Cancel" button on the screen or attach a text prompt "Touch the Home button to return to the function at this time is not available" (from the above picture, this text prompt is not attached).
In addition, the "Back" key of mobile phone is used frequently, and once the user's operating habits are developed, it is easy to form inertial thinking. Therefore, although the above scheme solves the conflict between fingerprint identification and "return" function, it does not solve the problem that users become fingerprint identification because they want to touch "return" because of inertia thinking. Don't blame the user for being stupid, this operating habit is cultivated by the system itself.
Let's look at the operation of the Back key and the Home key:
Is there anything wrong with this operation? Integrating the back key with the Home key weakens the use of the Home key function to some extent. In most cases, the Back key of iOS can only return to the top interface of the application, while the Back key of Android can not only return to the top interface of the application, but also return to the desktop homepage and even navigate between applications.
Therefore, most Android users will always touch the back button before exiting the application and returning to the desktop homepage, because this process is also very coherent in the touch experience. Therefore, this weakens the use of the physical Home key function to some extent. Of course, this problem will appear on all Android phones, but it may be more obvious on Meizu phones.
Integrating the back key with the Home key not only weakens the use of the Home key function to a certain extent, but also obliterates the biggest advantage of the entity key. The biggest feature of physical buttons is that they need to be given a certain strength to react, which brings a rare sense of security to users. Because you can even put your dangling finger on the physical button and stop for a minute without worrying about touching the virtual button by mistake. Yes, iPhone users can still get this sense of security until now. In addition, I think this is also part of the reason why Lao Luo insisted on using physical buttons on the hammer mobile phone.
You may say that the logic of touching the back key to return to the previous level and pressing the Home key to return to the desktop home page is very clear. Yes, that's true from this point of view, but when both need frequent operations, it's not necessarily so clear. You may also say, how can it lead to logical confusion, or habits will not happen. Yes, I may agree with this statement to some extent, but I believe you are not confident when you say this sentence.
Why are you so pushy? The problem is not big. Yes, it's nothing. The most important thing for users is to see if there are double-bottom columns. Don't believe it? Look! ! !
Secretly tell you a secret, in fact, I don't have MX5, just pretend to have MX5 with Charm Blue Note2 (I hope I can try MX5 _ in my blog column). Also, actually I'm not me, just pretending to be me, haha.
What efforts have other mobile phone manufacturers made for Android navigation bar? Hardly, what you see is basically the following two situations:
In any case, Meizu has spent several years exploring this problem, which is the best solution that Meizu can provide at present, and it may also be the best solution in the Android camp. Based on this, Meizu deserves corresponding applause.
In the latest material design specification, Android is not the messy Android. Android applications can also be elegant and beautiful, and some applications are not inferior to iOS. Don't believe it? Look! ! !
Also, the navigation bar that everyone used to spit out has now become an advantage. Because it is intuitive, convenient and efficient to use, this is the true face of Android applications. In fact, there are also some applications in China that follow the Android design specification, such as Zhihu:
For comparison, let me take a look at Zhihu for iOS:
Which platform design style do you prefer? Take Zhihu application on Android and iOS platforms as an example, I prefer the design style of Zhihu application on Android platform.
Finally, we brought the topic back to Meizu.
At present, the entire interaction logic of Meizu is based on the physical Home button, which makes the interaction mode of Meizu mobile phone different from other mobile phones, and sometimes even acts as a leader. So, can we see further? If fingerprint identification can be carried out on the screen in the future, or the physical Home button is cancelled for some reason, does this mean that Meizu has to rebuild a new interactive system?
This is not impossible. Now a series of patented technologies indicate that Apple may cancel the physical Home button in the future. However, no matter how technology develops in the future, I believe Meizu can come up with better solutions. At the same time, I hope I can have the opportunity to participate.
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