even on phones it's "bad", it requires high focus.. it's was only good in the theory that smartphones would be used for prolonged dedicated tasks. how i miss blind use of buttons on old dumbphones
It's good on phones because it allows them to become multi-tools. You can't have physical buttons for every thing any app might want to do; with a touch screen they can make their own buttons.
On cars it's silly. Cars are not multi-tools; they have a finite set of dedicated functions. Even for functions that benefit from a large high-res screen (maps, music library browsing, etc.), the actual input requirements are narrow enough to work with physical controls. Just look at the original iPod.
To be honest, if I had a droid 4 with the specs of my pixel 3a I would probably not purchase another phone for a decade. I loved the slide-out physical keyboard on the droid line.
I share your feelings. I had to buy a newer phone and I pinned the 3 buttons to the bottom of the screen where I used to have the buttons on the bezel. The screen is at least 2 cm / 1 inch too tall anyway. The alternative is swiping to go back, which is unusable.
Sometimes the buttons disappear but bringing them back is not as complicated as I feared. Of course it's worse than having them. I'd take a 3 cm shorter screen and 1 cm bottom bezel with buttons.
