Understood, and almost likewise.
Nope, not a fan of P’s gestures. Unintuitive and poorly designed. If they were gonna copy X’s gestures, which are mostly successful, they should have just copied it.
Of course this is very subjective but I actually think I slightly prefer the gestures on P. Neither are really intuitive but I actually think the X gestures less so. If you hand someone an X, even if they’ve used an iPhone before, they generally have no idea how to navigate. Give that same person a Pixel running P and they’ll more often at least understand the home button and back button. A single swipe to access the mult-app window on P is much better than the janky ‘swipe and hold’, swipe an inverted ‘L’ or swipe diagonally moves needed to do the same on the X. It’s also much easier to dismiss apps (no need to activate close gesture) and the suggested apps at the bottom seem pretty spot on. You can even copy content directly from those windows without having to bring the app to full screen.
The quick swipe to scroll between apps is a great feature on both but it’s inconsistent on the X. On the X, if you swipe right you can swipe left to return to the previous app but only if you do it relatively quickly, otherwise you have to swipe left again.
Android P is consisent in both directions and even lets you bump up the scroll speed.
P is far from perfect—always needing to double swipe to access the app drawer is often a pain. I also think it would feel like a more consistent experience if they ditched the back button entirely and went with swipes from the left or right edge to go back or forward, respectively—but only if it applied system-wide. I love the left to right gesture to ‘go back’ on the iPhone but it’s super inconsistent.
Regardless, I’m a fan of gesture based navigation in general—just think they both need a little polish.
