Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus Receives iPhone X-Like Gesture Navigation Support
The Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus was launched in December 2017 in China. Over the past few weeks, there have been reports that the device will be launched in India as well. While many expect Xiaomi to launch the Redmi Note 5 in India on the 14th of February, it won’t come as a surprise if the Redmi 5 Plus is launched instead.
The Redmi 5 Plus has a tall display and thin bezels all around. This means that so far, there were on-screen navigation buttons but, Xiaomi appears to be pushing a new update to the device. In the new update, the Redmi 5 Plus gets iPhone X-like navigation gestures which means that the on-screen buttons will no longer take up precious screen space. OnePlus has also introduced gestures for the OnePlus 5T in a new beta build.
Xiaomi had already introduced these gestures in the Mi Mix 2 but, it was a beta version update. It is unclear as of now, whether these gestures arrive via a stable or a beta update. The gestures resemble the iPhone X a lot.
For example, in order to reach the home screen, the user has to swipe up from the bottom of the screen while swiping from the bottom to the top and pausing for a second brings up your recent apps. Other gestures include swiping from the left or right of the screen to the middle to take the user to the previous page.
Over the years, Android’s take on navigation within the OS has been different from that of iOS. While Android phones have had three navigation buttons, iOS has had a physical home button which solved multiple purposes like multitasking, invoking Siri and other gestures like swiping from the left or right of the screen to the middle to take the user to the previous page. So, when Apple introduced these gestures in the iPhone X, the transition was a lot smoother thanks to the presence of gestures in the past iPhones.
Android, on the other hand, has used the three buttons, the home, back and multitasking button for every little navigation within the OS. These have either been software buttons or physical buttons, with nowadays OEMs offering the choice of both the navigation systems. When Android does shift to only gestures, the transition for users might not be as natural and organic as it was for iOS users.
It will be interesting to see when Xiaomi starts rolling out these gestures to more devices in a stable build. So far, this seems like a China-exclusive feature.
