Ranadok …doesn't have much better to do

Touch-sensitive buttons? Please, no.

It seems like touch sensitive buttons exist for the sole purpose of annoying me. You know, the little glowing symbols on the front of some electronic whatsit that respond to a touch (any touch - intentional or not) and give absolutely no feedback one way or another on whether you really did activate them. I've owned and used several devices that had these abominations of UI design, and the experiences have been nothing but annoying.

Thankfully, the numbers are real buttons

So what are my exact complaints about this not-so innocent technology? There are many. Here, have a handy list:

• Always either too sensitive or not sensitive enough
• No physical or auditory (annoying fake click sounds notwithstanding) feedback on activation
• Impossible to touch without activating (ie. you can't rest your finger on the device without activating it)
• Can't find the right button by touch without looking
• Does not work through a case or with gloves
• Very prone to errant activations
• Harder to hit only one when packed tightly

And, just to be fair, some things that I like:

• Look really nice when done well
• Gives devices clean lines and simpler overall designs
• No moving parts, less likely to fail (though they seem to fail all the time)
• That is all (and really, the first and second are kind of the same)

If you care to read on, I will detail a few specific examples of touch-sensitive buttons and the devices they ruined.

Just to keep things clear, I am not talking about buttons on touch screens  (e.g. an on-screen keyboard or touch GUI). Those are fine. Physical buttons may be better in many cases (I know I'll be looking for a hardware QWERTY for my next Android), but properly designed touch screen buttons at least give you the courtesy of letting you know when you hit them. The rest of the problems still stand, though they are often mitigated through better design and fundamentally different usage on touch screens (changing where buttons are and what they do is kind of the point, so having to look at them makes sense).

Anyhow, the first device with touch-sensitive buttones that I owned was an MP3 player, the Olympus M:Robe 100. In a micro-review: It was a simple, but capable, music player. I got it on a great deal (I forget the specifics, but it was a just a few bucks more than a 1GB iPod Shuffle for a full-featured 5GB MP3 player), and certainly got my money's worth out of it. It's still kicking around and I do use it from time to time when I don't want to use my phone (such as listening to podcasts in bed).  One thing about it that is totally incredible is the visual design. Here, take a look at it and marvel:

When it's off, it's completely black

Now, that just looks great. Just like the phone up above, the rich red buttons on a black body look really sweet. What is even better is that the evil touch buttons (which is to say, all of them) turn off based on what you are doing. If a certain button is not going to do anything (say, the 'go up a level' button when you are already at the top of the tree), it simply disappears.  That was probably my favourite unique feature of this device, and probably the only reason I can think of to use touch-sensitive buttons rather than real, physical, clicking buttons. The downsides of the touch technology still stand, though. I had to be careful when putting the device in my pocket, as facing it towards my body would result in errant 'clicks' through my clothes. Yes, I could use the hold switch, but it was oddly placed on one of the side edges and was completely covered up the iPod Mini case I was using (the complete lack of accessories being another downside to the Olympus line). Because the entire front face of the MP3 player was a single smooth surface, I also had to look at the device to pause the music or change the volume. Trying to guess where to touch could (and often would) just as easily result in skipping forward or doing who knows what else as my hand skimmed the sensitive surface when I took it out of my pocket. Not as usable as a day-to-day device as it could have been with some nice clicky physical buttons.

The next notable touch-button cursed device I owned was the LG Chocolate I have pictured at the top. The phone fit in nicely with my MP3 player, terrible interface and all. It didn't have the adapting controls of the M:Robe but instead had a weird textured circle around the main navigation buttons. This was presumably so you could tell by touch where you were and what you were activating, but in reality meant nothing. By the time you feel the little ridges on the surface, you have already gone into the menu, pulled up your contacts, and called Bangladesh.  The Chocolate is also a billion times worse than the M:Robe when it comes to sensitivity. The buttons on the Chocolate either activated at the slightest brush or would do nothing no matter how hard you pressed. The matter was compounded by the lag in the phone's interface, so you never knew if you activated it and the phone is lagging or if it never registered the touch at all. It was a complete mess and I don't miss the phone at all (though the slider did make a satisfying ca-chunk).

So, why am I talking about this all of a sudden? After all, the M:Robe and the Chocolate are gone, replaced by the much superior Magic, so the scourge of the touch sensitive button is no longer relevant to me. We'll, I've been keeping an eye on the new Android offerings, and it seems like they all have useless touch buttons. The Sprint HTC Hero, the Motorola Sholes (or Tao, or Droid, or whatever the name ends up being), the Samsung Moment, the Moto Cliq, and so on. Now, I'm sure that there are plenty of button-ed phones on the way, and some of those may actually be fine, I haven't actually used any of them after all. Still, what does a guy have to do to get some real buttons on his phone? I am two or three years away from a new phone, and I hope physical buttons will be an option when I get there.