After I changed to the gesture navigation I finally come to the conclusion that the “classic” 3-button navigation is just broken since the gesture navigation was already introduced in Android 10 and is seen as the new standard for Android.
3-Button navigation:
- Screen brightness slider is with with white symbols on a light blue slider - it still works this way but it looks somehow broken.
- Recent apps only work if either you only use the built in launcher “Quickstep” or if you disable animations in the developer options.
- Recent apps can be moved slightly upwards and stay there when animations are disabled. This seems to be a bug did not get fixed yet caused animations are usually not changed - because doing so is a developer options and not regular user setting.
- The navigation buttons are sometimes displayed “white on white”, for example when opening the notification drawer which is displayed with a white background. You can still see the navigation buttons since they have a shadow, but this looks like a bug to me.
Gesture navigation:
- Screen brightness slider is displayed properly with black symbols and not with white symbols on a light blue slider.
- Activating the “recent apps” view always works, even with animations enabled in the developer options.
- The buttom gesture bar is always display correctly and not “white on white” in some situation like the 3-button navigation. So when opening the notification drawer the navigation bar will turn dark as well as in apps which display a navigation bar with a white background like Vivaldi
It seems 3-button navigation is considered an outdated feature which is not really tested properly. I try to get used to the gesture navigation, at least it works much more reliable and predictable.
Does anyone know if the situation is better in Android 13? At least in Android 12 devices from other manufacturers seem to have the same issues with the navigation, so it’s not specific to the FP4 but more a problem of Android itself.