The Galaxy S7 marked the last generation that would have physical navigation buttons as the Galaxy S8 saw a move to on-screen navigation to accommodate the nearly bezel-less display. This means that the home button only needs to be tapped to be interacted with as opposed to actually needing to be pressed.

A user over at XDA has developed a app that will modify the behavior of the home button on the Galaxy S7 to be capacitive. This means that you don’t need to physically depress the button to interact with it, simply touch it like a virtual button such as on the Galaxy S8.

The app runs as a service in the foreground so you’ll see a permanent notification in the notification pane but you can quickly pause and disable the app via this. If you don’t like the persistent notification, just hold you finger on the notification and within the notification settings you’ll be able to disable it (the notification will be hidden but the app still works fine).

You may find the notification useful though since you may find you have to disable the app temporarily when another app requires the use of the fingerprint sensor to authenticate you. There is a PRO version which includes the whitelist feature that will allow you to automatically disable the Fingertouch service for specified apps so you don’t have to manually disable it each time.

The app service is active only when screen is on and is automatically paused when screen is off so does not interfere with fingerprint unlock and there is no adverse impact on battery life.

It may seem like a small thing, but not having to click the home button is one of my favorite things about the S8 so to have this on a device like the S7 is something that will no doubt speed up unlocking the device and also reduce the wear on the physical home button.

Android 7.0 or above is required to run the app and you can grab it for free via the Google Play Store using this link.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. The rugged phones: falls, waterproof, dust, etc, are becoming increasingly frequent devices: and the agm are the best ones fir the PPR ( at least to me) ,,, and the quality in specs too is becaming something really to count on .. No more “dumbphones” apparently. Btw: have you seen the x1 18k gold edition?

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