I think Apple made the right call here for novice users. The back button on Android is useful, but it's very mysterious. You use it by kind of mashing it and hoping it does what you want, and then finding another route if that doesn't work. That's fine for power users, but it really adds stress for novice users. Novice users tend to have low lying fear that they will mess something up, and they need to understand things before they do them. Back button can never be understood, even by advanced users, because every app implements it differently.
There's nothing preventing every app on iOS from implementing a back button, but they have to label it, and it has to stay in-app. This forces power users to do the work to navigate around app boundaries, which can feel clunky, but it makes the interaction model much more compressible so it fits in more brains.
Interesting point that lack of back button contributes to iOS apps being better. I realize there are many reasons why that's the case, but I certainly have not had to extricate myself from sub-menus to the extent I have in (highly-rated!) Play store apps.
I went from iOS to Android and back again and really miss the back button, but I'm finding myself mostly wanting to use it to close apps, which of course the home button does. It would be nice to have a software accessibility back button to float in the bottom right of the screen similar to the accessibility home button that would close open menus etc before exiting if possible.
Swiping right from the left edge is the defacto way to go back on iOS. I realize not all apps implement it, but the good ones seem to. It's the thing I miss most every time I use Android, especially in the browser. Having to reach all the way down to that back button is more work, and its harder to do with one hand.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 9.8 ms ] threadThere's nothing preventing every app on iOS from implementing a back button, but they have to label it, and it has to stay in-app. This forces power users to do the work to navigate around app boundaries, which can feel clunky, but it makes the interaction model much more compressible so it fits in more brains.
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[1] unless the developer has intentionally broken this convention, in which case I suggest you uninstall the app immediately.
Because "back" is ambiguous, and changes meaning often. It's also never explicitly defined.
How can that be ambiguous?
I went from iOS to Android and back again and really miss the back button, but I'm finding myself mostly wanting to use it to close apps, which of course the home button does. It would be nice to have a software accessibility back button to float in the bottom right of the screen similar to the accessibility home button that would close open menus etc before exiting if possible.