Android phones, apps and tablets

What are the gestures? I'm normally using my phone one-handed so I think the buttons are still better for me but I might be tempted to give it a go.

I'm normally using my phone one-handed

You'll go blind

I think I am.

That old wives tale was true!

Oh, wait, no, I'm just old and spend 18hrs a day staring at a computer monitor.

The truth is less exciting - I'm either holding a pint or riding a bike.

I'm either holding a pint or riding a bike.

Surely these can be combined for efficiency?

Safety first, kids!

The hippy cannot condone (in public at least) the consumption of alcohol while riding a bicycle.

I've found a wobbly swipe easier to do than hit the back button when cycling on shitty road surfaces.

Almost certainly it's because I'm just used to the buttons. What are the replacement gestures? I'll turn it on and give it a go. But trying to operate my partner's phone before I turned the buttons on was fucked. "Argh how to I get out of this full screen bullshit, where's the back button?!"

"To switch apps, swipe up from the bottom, hold then release" sounds pretty shit.

Nup, fuck that. Switching apps sucks.

I want to hit a button, not rely on holding. I haven't mounted this phone on the bars yet but that would be nasty for using as GPS, etc

Nope, you can also just swipe along the bottom of the screen. My 9 year old showed me that yesterday 😬

Tried that. Still feels nasty. Half the time it opens the Google search bar.

Yeah my absolute technophobe partner who's hates any change with her devices is fully on board with gestures. I switched for a week to see why and just can't get on with it, yep app switching sucks and constant search bar popping up is annoying

Team 3 buttons here too. Remove animation and double tap square for multitasking is fastestst

You can remove that fucking Google bar 👍

Gestures are ace for one handed.

Swipe right or left from the edges to go back.

Up from the bottom to go home.

Up from the bottom and hold to multitask.

There are subtleties you can add to build on those three main gestures.

Without installing a new launcher?

Nope. I gave it a fair try... at least 26 seconds before I fucked it off.

I recently trained myself to use gestures because hanging onto buttons made me feel old.

You didn't list getting to all your apps, and that's the one I'm still failing to do reliably...

... I think it's swipe up from anywhere except the very bottom, and only works from home screen.

Yeah, was one of the first things I did when I got my phone, along wit turning off Google Assistant. It'll be in the settings somewhere, 14 levels deep.

I swipe up from the middle for "All Apps".

Question for left-handers: some app UIs have a right handed bias. For example, Google Photos has a scroll handle you can use to quickly scroll through long lists of photos, but it's on the right of the screen.

Do you notice when an app has a bias towards right-handedness? Is it annoying? How do you deal with it?

Well, pretty much all apps in Android (used to) have the burger menu on the left hand side, making them biased toward sinister folk.

Speaking of which, another gesture type thing is touching and holding the left edge to 'peek' the menu.

Phones being as big as they are I doom scroll with my right hand holding the phone and go two handed for typing or anything needing more refined motor skills

Thanks for participating in my highly scientific survey. I did a bit of googling and there's surprisingly little written about left/right-handed accessibility. Probably because, as you suggest, it's a bit of a non-issue. Good to know.