[Question] Help Choosing a Phone

[WuddaWaste]

Man, I'm sorry I'm so late to this thread! Fortunately, my input wouldn't have swayed you (though it may have accelerated you on the same path).

The Zenfone 2 truly is a hell of a phone for the money. Couple it with next-day shipping available in the USA, and you basically have the same reason I've bought two of them so far. When a phone breaks, you need something awesome and you need something pronto.

Both people I've given the phone to have been extremely happy with it, though one of them does lament button placement as you've said. She claims the home button is too close to the screen, and she keeps hitting "home" when she means to hit "spacebar". Haha.

[JoshMcMadMac]

Both people I've given the phone to have been extremely happy with it, though one of them does lament button placement as you've said. She claims the home button is too close to the screen, and she keeps hitting "home" when she means to hit "spacebar". Haha.

I have done that a few times as well. It would have been nice for them to use the dead space at the bottom of the bezel to make the three capacitive buttons larger and better spaced from the screen...as well as back-lit!

[WuddaWaste]

My proposed solution was to use a larger keyboard with a big, fat spacebar. She was not as amused as I was at the notion.

[WuddaWaste]

A thought just occurred to me in regards to the problem above.

I saw for other phones it's possible (and easy-ish) to enable on-screen navigation keys and then subsequently disable the softkeys altogether. Have any of you dudes tried this?

I know it will probably require a rooted device.

I also know it's in the build.prop as one of the two following keys:
(a) qemu.hw.mainkeys
(b) ro.sho.navigationbar

just a thought.

[galaxym]

Both people I've given the phone to have been extremely happy with it, though one of them does lament button placement as you've said. She claims the home button is too close to the screen, and she keeps hitting "home" when she means to hit "spacebar". Haha.

I have an Asus Fonepad 7 and I'm always hitting the home button when typing its so annoying. That's what puts me off buying this Zenfone2

[cookiedough]

Both people I've given the phone to have been extremely happy with it, though one of them does lament button placement as you've said. She claims the home button is too close to the screen, and she keeps hitting "home" when she means to hit "spacebar". Haha.

I have an Asus Fonepad 7 and I'm always hitting the home button when typing its so annoying. That's what puts me off buying this Zenfone2

Through xposed and key mods, you could possibly disable it.

[edcoolio]

A thought just occurred to me in regards to the problem above.

I saw for other phones it's possible (and easy-ish) to enable on-screen navigation keys and then subsequently disable the softkeys altogether. Have any of you dudes tried this?

I know it will probably require a rooted device.

I also know it's in the build.prop as one of the two following keys:
(a) qemu.hw.mainkeys
(b) ro.sho.navigationbar

just a thought.

It is relatively (or at least WAS, last time I tried) ready once the device is rooted.

It is the same as the old process used in the past to get Spotify function with unlimited skips/song selections. There is another way to do that with Xposed BTW.



Root

Install Xposed Installer

Search for and install "Phab7"

Enable/Reboot

Open app

Select your navigation bar preference. Phone seems to work fine most of the time, but you can use phablet and decrease the size below in the app.

I don't like giving up the screen real estate, but there are definitely devices where this is useful.

I'm not sure about disabling the other keys as this can be specific to the device - but DO NOT disable the soft keys without making 100% sure that the UI on screen navigation works after a reboot or two!


EASIEST SOLUTION IF IT WORKS:

Another option that MAY work, but no guarantees, is an app called "soft buttons" in the play store. It is very straightforward and easy if your device supports it for both killing capacitive buttons AND giving you soft buttons.