Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons.

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨alyaza@beehaw.org⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/touch-screens-are-over-even-apple-is-bringing-back-buttons-86fb9ea8?st=NCCPhJ

The tyranny of touch screens may be coming to an end.

Companies have spent nearly two decades cramming ever more functions onto tappable, swipeable displays. Now buttons, knobs, sliders and other physical controls are making a comeback in vehicles, appliances and personal electronics.

In cars, the widely emulated ultra-minimalism of Tesla’s touch-screen-centric control panels is giving way to actual buttons, knobs and toggles in new models from Kia, BMW’s Mini, and Volkswagen, among others. This trend is delighting reviewers and making the display-focused interiors of Tesla and its imitators feel passé.

Similar re-buttonization is occurring in everything from e-readers to induction stoves.

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Comments

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TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Thank fuck. So glad I managed to dodge the cars with all touch screen controls. I got one as a loaner after my Civic was totaled in an accident (Thank u for buying me a new car, uninsured, out-of-state white supremacist with a truck too big for any reasonable use!) and it used the touch screen to control the climate control! I had to look away from the road to change the heating!

Just stupid.

Give me simple buttons and knobs I can feel and fix. Capacitives, touch screens, all that nonsense should stick to phones.

I’m okay with the phone being a touch screen. The rest can go back to normal.

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I want buttons on my phone too.
  
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  - 5in1k@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I want my iPhone button back. It was better. Swiping fucking sucks and it doesn’t work half the time.
    
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  - TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I got 3 (Volume rocker and power) and it feels like plenty.
    
    It’s been so long since I had more than 3 and I’m curious. I had an iPhone for work, that had a 4th, the home button on the bottom center of the touch screen and I hated that. What do you want from physical buttons on the phone?
    
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  - Zephorah@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Feeling nostalgic for the blackberry?
    
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- TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  In colder parts of the world you actually drive with mittens on. I have no idea how’s that going to work with modern touch screen cars.
  
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  - Geologist@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Heated steering wheels
    
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  - OpenStars@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You either have to purchase special capacitance-enabled globes (like silver) or else take them off for every button press that you want to make. :-(
    
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- shininghero@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I would have brought it right back and asked for a different loaner, since the HVAC is clearly and visibly missing.
  
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- GrindingGears@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m of the opposite opinion. I’m tired of dashboards just absolutely smothered in Technicoloured buttons. I much prefer the touchscreen where everything is centralized. I find it less distracting, personally.
  
  Cars are a very intimate personal thing though, and I understand others frustrations with it. Guess I’m the outlier.
  
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t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I don’t know where the author got their information, but they name Minis as one company doing this, and it’s absolutely not the case. I just checked to be sure, and the 2026 minis have the same 5-button, one touchscreen setup as the 2025s. My 2020 mini has 15+ physical buttons and toggles.

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Zephorah@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’m fine with the phone as is, but vehicles need tactile control panels.

As for tablets, I just buy a keyboard case that folds open and closed like a laptop. That screen will twist around and lay flat to use as a proper tablet, if need be.

I don’t really want to sacrifice screen space on either mobile device, to buttons.

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OpenStars@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Unfortunately the buttons are likely still controlled by the central computer rather than having standalone functionality.

When I was a kid if I wanted to turn off the radio I simply hit the “off” button.

Now in my Subaru when I start the car I have to wait for it to wake fully up, while it could be blasting out music very loud (think: if the music when I turned off the vehicle was softer, but now a commercial is the very opposite of soft) until pressing the off button finally thinks through all the ramifications of what it means (in the context of prioritization in relation to other tasks) to actually turn the sound “off”.

I love my car but I definitely prefer the older approach when off = “off”.

So button vs. touchscreen is only part of the underlying set of issues related to computerization and, for some vehicles, the increasing trend towards SAAS.

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tal@lemmy.today ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’d like to be able to get touchpads wirh physical buttons on laptops. Very few manufacturers do them.

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esaru@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
That article reads like it was AI written.

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- t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I actually think it was. The 2026 mini is the same as the 2025 mini in having almost no physical buttons, and a giant touchscreen, yet they call minis out by name. Completely incorrect, but got published.
  
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viral.vegabond@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Good, they should’ve never gone away in the first place.

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FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Fuck yeah: Buttons! Keyboards, expandable storage, and swappable batteries next please. I miss being able to accurately touch type on my phone without looking.

Virtual keyboards have never been great and the mainstream ones are getting enshittified more and more (Heliboard is OK with some minor modification, but it's open source).

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- HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah I’m not really a fan of virtual keyboards that are basically querty on the screen. The compact size of the phone kinda demands a different approach.
  
  I use flickboard which helps me minimize typos. My all time favorite virtual keyboard was the now defunct minuum. I was able to reliably touch type with it. I stopped using because it wasn’t open source (but miss it despite that).
  
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- tal@lemmy.today ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  Virtual keyboards have never been great
  
  I’m actually surprised that nobody ever fundamentally reinvented text input for touchscreens in a way that caught on.
  
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  - TehPers@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There have been touch-specific keyboard layouts, but not really for English or other languages with Latin characters. You can probably imagine that CJK touch KBs can be pretty creative sometimes though.
    
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  - fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There’s swipe if that counts.
    
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  - Blisterexe@lemmy.zip ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Kind of seems like reinventing the wheel to me, given that I, at least, can maintain like 50wpm on my phone. I have a hard time imagining another design that could let me type faster.
    
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Hexagon@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Great. Now do it with phones too. I don’t want to turn the screen on and look where the media controls are just to skip songs

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kehet@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Finally! I was hoping to see some better haptic feedback systems but this is great too

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Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

The push to re-physicalize interfaces has even led to an unexpected side gig for Dr. Plotnick, the academic authority on buttons. Companies are tapping her to consult on how to improve their physical controls.

Well played.

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