But if I want to go back one step... I press back button. It takes me back one step. It's like the Go-mode of undo :-). Previous page or form in a browser, back several layers of menu in app or game. I may be writing an email then press back to go back to main mail screen. Etc
Basically for me, Android back button does exactly what I want it to do, in OS, games, programs and Web, zero sarcasm. And home button to "take me to where I was before I entered the app".
The back and share pipeline of Android are like it's super powers as far as I'm concerned (and I say this as somebody forced to use iPhone for work last 4 years, so get to experience both daily)
Ah, I see now that I didn't make myself clear in my previous comment. I am not criticizing the back button functionality per se, but rather the way that many apps have things set up so that it requires more, sometimes a lot more, presses of the back button to back out than it took actions (taps, swipes, whatever) to get somewhere. While this may perhaps be useful in some cases, in my opinion it is often done in a classic 'nagware' fashion, to make it more difficult to leave the app.
When I press the home button, this often doesn't close down the foreground app entirely, so after a while of doing this I will end up with lots of apps running in the background, which I don't like because often they keep consuming power even when backgrounded and may also continue gathering data about me that way.
I am aware that apps can also install and run background services separately from the app, but in my experience, the apps that I use tend to also shut down these services, as long as I exit the app entirely, using the back button.
That seems a valid and desired behaviour.
If I want to exit app, I press home button.
But if I want to go back one step... I press back button. It takes me back one step. It's like the Go-mode of undo :-). Previous page or form in a browser, back several layers of menu in app or game. I may be writing an email then press back to go back to main mail screen. Etc
Basically for me, Android back button does exactly what I want it to do, in OS, games, programs and Web, zero sarcasm. And home button to "take me to where I was before I entered the app".
The back and share pipeline of Android are like it's super powers as far as I'm concerned (and I say this as somebody forced to use iPhone for work last 4 years, so get to experience both daily)