Yes, that's the case. When you're using gesture navigation the only visible UI left is the horizontal bar at them bottom. Apps adjusted for gesture navigation will also draw behind that line.

Gesture navigation is still an option which might not be enabled by default on all devices, but I strongly suggest trying it out. I used it quite some time with the latest release candidates of Android 10 and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back. Especially the back swipe is really nice.

How the final implementation came to be is covered by an excellent blog post from Google: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/08/gesture-na...

I hope there remain ways to hack the buttons back (in 9.x there was):

  #install a 3rd party launcher (nova)
  pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.nexuslauncher
  settings put secure gesture_swipe_up 0
  settings put secure system_navigation_keys_enabled 1
  reboot

Also, the charts show that it's either equal and better, and there's also the implicit fact that not showing buttons also means more screen space, so even if usability metric is the same, visually it's a win.

Then again I still miss having physical back and home buttons since I upgraded to a newer android phone. It would be nice if manufactures added more buttons to the side of the phone so the other fingers have something to do.

That's also discussed in the blog post I linked. tl;dr: Only a small subset of users (3-7%) uses a swipe gesture to open these menus (all others use the hamburger menu) and these users have to adapt now to do different kinds of swipes for opening the menu and invoking the back gesture.

Your mileage may vary. I've never learned to get along well with gestures, although I did give them a solid try.

I have been hearing this for years.

https://www.xda-developers.com/how-project-treble-revolution...

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-q-apex-biggest-thing-...

Android 10 lets you download and install certain security updates through Google Play as easily as an app. That is a first, and it should not be understated.

They say this with literally every release of Android ever. It's just posturing, I'll believe it when I see it.

If that happens, that's an OS that is unacceptable to me. It's bad enough that physical buttons were eliminated in favor of the soft buttons. That bothers me to this day, but I learned to live with it.

Eliminating even the horrible soft buttons, though, would be a bridge too far in terms of reducing usability.

edit: to be clear, I now have the option for traditional 3 buttons, 2 buttons (pill), and no buttons (all gestures).