Do you remember what smartphones were like 5 years ago? It was the year 2017 and our frank impression is that the logical limit in terms of components and hardware had already been reached. Until the cell phones “squeezable”.
brands like HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola they began to implement this concept. Where they fully exploited the ability to integrate Android sensors to add a series of direct access controls through gestures.
The principle behind this idea is that through light swipes, sequential taps, jerks, and squeezes, Android will automatically activate certain features that would otherwise require time-consuming navigation through the phone’s touch interface.
This functionality became popular very quickly and for a short period of time several manufacturers followed the trend by implementing their proposals.
But those times are behind us. At least enough to make us nostalgic.
What happened to squeeze smartphones
This reflection has been triggered precisely by an interesting article published by colleagues at andro4allwhere we were planted with the memory of that functionality that was so imitated in 2017 and that has now been strangely diluted.
At the time the HTC U11 It could be considered that it was the main standard of this technology, which in the case of this particular manufacturer was called Edge Sense.
It was nothing more than a series of sensors placed on the sides in the lower part of the device, where by making a series of squeezes in a certain sequence, certain functions were activated.
In our Wayerless review (Rest In Peace) five years ago we were already talking about this function as a topic of little relevance in the great set of things:
“Usability-wise, it’s pretty snappy – what you’d expect from a Snapdragon 835, clearly – and HTC’s interface has managed to stay relatively clean over the years, without cluttering up the experience too much. If I could claim something, it is that the fingerprint reader is not the most reliable and is positioned very low, making it somewhat uncomfortable. Same with the capacitive navigation keys.
And the battery? Pretty good, about 5 hours of screen time under normal use.”
In the end, this thing about squeezable smartphones was a trend that was completely diluted. Sure, the configuration apps for these features are still available, but their support was withdrawn years ago.
With the exception of Motorola, which still uses some movements and touches in what they now call “gestures”, to activate the camera or the flashlight and even turn off the alarm quickly.