Their own charts/graphs on that page show that the new approach is WORSE (by their own metrics) than the 3 soft buttons.

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

You don't need any "hack", right in System > Gestures > Navigation, all three options are openly available (100% gesture, 2-button + gesture, old 3-button style). I believe they intent on keeping it all available for sometime, if only for accessibility reasons.

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.

I don't understand how 'swipe from the left' can be used as a universal back gesture. Isn't it the case that most apps use that gesture already to open a menu?

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.

You can swipe at an angle (around 45° up or down) to open the menu, and straight out to go back. Not very intuitive/discoverable, but works pretty well once you get used to it

> I don't understand how 'swipe from the left' can be used as a universal back gesture. Isn't it the case that most apps use that gesture already to open a menu?

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.

Android has 1.3 BILLION users. 3-7% is tens of millions of users

After reading your comment, I went through my most commonly used apps and found that they all have a hamburger button in the top left corner that brings up the same menu as a swipe from left gesture. Somehow I never noticed those buttons before, leaving me feeling a bit spooked. How is it that something I look at dozens of times a day could go unnoticed for so long?

I had the inverse reaction: I discovered that all these apps support swiping from the left. At least the hamburger menu is visible - there is nothing really advertising the swipe gesture.

> once you're used to it, you don't want to go back.

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

Try smart launcher, and set up your own gestures. I haven't been a fan of gestures either historically, but smart launcher has converted me. Single finger up / down / left / right; double finger up / down / left / right; double tap on screen, and a couple of others.