Chances are that your Android smartphone has precious few physical buttons on it. Touchscreens and capacitive buttons have effectively taken over most of the functions that buttons served not so long ago. Now a Kickstarter project wants to bring the button back and judging by the initial response, so do a lot of people. Pressy, also known as “the Almighty Android Button!” wants to bring simplicity back to your phone.
The idea is simple and quite clever. Pressy is a tiny button that connects to your phone through the headphone jack.
With the free Pressy app, it can be configured to trigger a number of actions based on button clicks. Three actions are already set up, a single short click activates the flashlight (try it on your smartphone right now – is it that easy?), one long click toggles your phone in and out of silent mode and a double click lets you snap a photo. The app also lets you set up additional actions.
And what if you want to use your headphone jack for, say, actual headphones. No worries – The button can be attached to a keychain sleeve and the button on your headphones now acts as the Pressy key.
Other actions are easy to set up. For example, you could program new Pressy button combinations for social media check-ins, toggling Bluetooth or Wi-Fi on and off, taking screenshots and more.
The Basic Pressy deal gets you one black Pressy button with free access to the Pressy App with all features included. An extra US$3 also gets you the Pressy Key Chain or a choice of red, white or blue for the button colour. US$45 gets you a gold-coated Pressy button.
It took less than 24 hours for Pressy to meet its US$40,000 goal. As I write this, US$272,850 has been pledged and 44 days remain in the campaign!
Delivery of the Pressy is set for March 2014.
Sources : Kickstarter // Pressy