With the announcement by Blackberry to release a full keyboarded phone in 2021, a lot of criticism ensued, others went ahead to even say it was like beating a dead horse. Truly whats the norm are the famous 3 buttons on every phone , the volume rockers paired with the power button. A few companies add the extra custom buttons. and though some are extremely functional, few are just for aesthetics.

So are buttons even needed in 2020, to be precise are the 3 “Must have” buttons needed at all?

This is a simple no, maybe not now but with the upcoming devices rumored to be port-less, it would even be interesting if the buttons become history too, to enable simplicity at its finest.

What would be the replacement?

The answer to this would be inspired by the Mi Mix Alpha released earlier this year, it was an all-round screened phone, with the whole phone being covered by a screen, except the camera module.

This led to the side of the phone being able to house the power and volume controls, with this phone it became apparent that physical buttons aren’t as needed as people think enabling customization where each button would be located anywhere on the sides, even to an extent of choosing the sizes of the touch area hence flexibility in usage.

My thoughts would be, though an all-round screen is not yet adopted to the masses we can make use of the curved edges in phones to achieve this, maybe it will solve the placement puzzle that has been hurting peoples brains, as users may end up rejecting a phone just by the placement of such buttons.

So with the theory said, what would be the advantages of this:

• Flexibility in usage- one decides the placement and size of the touch area
• A tighter seal- with the phone being a block, there will be way less room for water to get in the phone
• Better gaming experiences – the worry of accidentally pressing the buttons during gaming will be gone
• Bring life to a phone by making use of the vibration motor as different ranges of vibration are way better than a single click

Conclusion

With this being highly controversial as ,if it were not, most companies would have adopted it, it is worth it to give it a try, for the beauty of exploration is the solving of mysteries instead of having what could be’s or would be’s. In my opinion this will be a great addition to an era where smartphones are changing with every device that gets into the market.