We knew it years ago, we use it daily, it’s simple, functional and it will only get better.
I bet a lot of people think that Apple was / is the first company who implemented gesture navigation on their mobile devices..
However that is not the case, so who was the actual pioneer of gesture based navigation in a handheld device? Hint, it rhymes with Calm…
Are you interested to test it yourself?
Do you want to know how you can try it right now on your Android phone? Do you want to know why this is a game changer in a sense of how we are actually using our smart phones?
If your answer on any of those questions is YES, than this article is a must read for you!
It’s either a mystery or a history
Well, in this case is certainly a history.
So who started it all, who was the first?
As I’ve said in the intro, it rhymes with Calm… Yes you’ve probably guessed, it was Palm!
Palm was the first who implemented a gesture based navigation on a handheld device ( mainstream device) that was used for communication.
It was a legendary Pre who was the pioneer. and it was back in 2009 at CES (Consumer Electronic Show) when Pre debuted.
Fun fact: Before the official unveiling the phone was known by the codename Castle named after the White Castle ‘Slider’ hamburgers, since this was Palm’s first slider phone).
The Pre was actually the first Palm device to use webOS, a Linux-based platform that replaced Palm’s previous Palm OS.
It was actually quite a powerful phone back in the day.
Specs included a original Palm Pre’s CPU is a 600 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 (ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX) underclocked to 500 MHz. It was using a Marvell sd8686 chip as a Wireless LAN SDIO Adapter for the WiFi and STMicroelectronics VX6852 as a 3.15-megapixel resolution sensor (2048 x 1536) for camera. For all non geeks out there, it was just as powerful as the Apple’s flagship for 2009, iPhone 3GS.
Gesture navigation
The webOS is as I’ve already said was based on Linux (So is Android).
It’s Interface was based on a system of “cards” that were used to manage multitasking.
webOS also supports multi-touch gestures, enabling most navigational input to be made using the touchscreen.
The Pre did not include a virtual keyboard, only a portrait-oriented slide-out keyboard- A full QWERTY one.
However an onscreen, virtual keyboard could be embedded in the code and was made available through a third party patch.
So how did actually worked?
Depending on the Pre webOS application that was opend, if any, you were able to navigate the Palm Pre and determine the actions by moving your finger(s) in certain way on and below the Pre screen.
For example, you could swipe to move between open “cards,” or screens of an application, in Card View. It looked something like that:
I’ve also found a list of some common Pre gestures and typical actions that occurred when you performed them.
- Taping the center button in gesture area, opened Card View or opened application full-screen.
- Brief tap on the screen, selected an item, such as an icon, a button, or a text field.
- Swipe from one side of the screen to the other, scrolled or moved between cards or photos or it deleted an item from the list.
- Move two fingers toward each other on the screen, Zoomed out on whatever you were watching
- Move two fingers away from each other on the screen, Zoomed in on whatever you were watching.
There were more, but those were the essential ones.
So now you know, who was the OG in the gesture based navigation, and no it was not Apple.
Seeing is believing
So you want to try it out for yourself, but you don’t own a “prehistoric” Palm device, nor the (very) expensive iPhone X and you are an Android phone fan / user, what now?
Not to worry, there are many ways you can actually try out the gesture based navigation and I will cover the most popular ones.
Pie navigation // LMT Launcher
Pie navigation was first introduced back in a day with the Paranoid Android ROM — (Video) around 5 years ago, it basically disabled navigation buttons and used PIE for navigating around the system, it was a great idea that really helped to get the most out of the fairly small screens surface back in the day.
Soon after a XDA user noname81 created the app called LMT Launcher that brought the PIE futures to other stock and custom ROM’s.
LMT is a tool for Android (tested already on multiple devices but should run on nearly all) that launches a command when perform single touch or multitouch gestures on the screen (In any app/screen/etc.). You can connect basic and advanced commands to any gesture LMT supports. In addition to the gestures you can activate a system-wide PieControl for navigation like the feature in the ICS stock browser (touch the side of the screen to activate it).
Installation
Download the latest apk, copy it to your phone and install it via file explorer. For the pie just start LMT, set actions to the different pie slices and start the TouchService. If you want to use gestures and/or ISAS first try to use the auto configuration feature. If gestures and ISAS are not working correctly afterwards, set the specified input device for your phone and for ISAS set the proper touchscreen to screen factors manually.
Commands
- None -> Trigger no command
- App -> Trigger an arbitrary app
- Home -> Switch to home screen
- HomeLongpress -> Trigger the TaskManager
- Menu -> Trigger the menu key
- Back -> Trigger the back key
- Search -> Activate search
- SearchLongpress -> Activate voice search
- NextApp -> Switch to the next running app
- PrevApp -> Switch to the previous running app
- LastApp-> Switch to the last opened app
- OpenNotificationBar-> Open the notification bar
- OpenQuickSettings-> Open the quick settings
- OpenKeyboard-> Open the soft keyboard
- OpenPowermenu -> Open the power menu
- Wifi -> Toggle the Wifi mode
- Data -> Toggle the data mode
- Bluetooth -> Toggle the Bluetooth mode
- GPS -> Open the GPS mode
- Key -> Trigger an arbitrary key (e.g. “3” for the HOME key — see http://developer.android.com/referen.../KeyEvent.html for keycodes)
- Activity -> Trigger an arbitrary activity (e.g. “com.android.lmt.InfoActivity” for the LMT info page)
- WebPage -> Open an arbitry webpage (e.g. “http://forum.xda-developers.com")
- Script -> Open an arbitrary script (e.g. “/mnt/sdcard/sendevent.sh” for Home Longpress — see attached script sendevent.sh)
- KillApp -> Kill the current foreground app and switch to home screen
- KillAllApps -> Kill all apps and switch to home screen
- TaskerTask -> Start a predefined tasker task (You should avoid spaces in your task name)
- Shortcut -> Start a system shortcut
- Screenshot -> Take a screenshot
- PiePointer -> Activate the pie pointer feature (only for pie actions).
You can download and test out the LMT Launcher navigation WITHOUT ROOT following this link right HERE.
Swipe Navigation
I use this way of navigating myself, as is a bit cleaner than the PIE and it works a bit faster, but it is truly a matter of preference, both work great.
Swipe Navigation is a light app that allows you to swipe from the edge of your screen to execute many types of actions, you can make it simple or you can complicate it, its up to you.
It has around 20 different gestures
If you have Dock enabled, it lets you have a unlimited amount of actions
Swipe Navigation is like pie controls but without any ui elements and is faster and easier to navigate. So basically you get a PIE without seeing any elements
This app uses Accessibility services, but it does NOT NEED ROOT.
You can download the app from the Play Store for FREE right HERE.
Bonus content for OnePlus 5T Users
If you own a OnePlus 5T (like me) you are in luck, all you need to do is install the latest OxygenOS beta, beta 3 and you can enable the “Apple-like” gestures navigation.
How to get beta 3
You can download the ROM file from HERE.
If you have TWRP installed, you can just put the Rom.zip on to your internal storage and install it from there.
For detailed guide look at my latest story right HERE.
The future is now!
Wait, what??
Yes, you’ve read that right! The future is NOW. Since Apple, one of the biggest tech companies released a handheld device that uses gestures based navigation around the system, a lot of people will “jump on the bandwagon” and for once that is a good thing, as using gestures certainly feels more natural and a lot faster way (once you get a hang of it) of navigation trough the system.
It’s only a question of time when this becomes standard, and once it does the way handheld technology evolves will change forever.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at wearemtodix@gmail.com
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