What is gesture in Android

Question

I would like to know what is meant by gestures in typical mobiles more specifically android ones. Android supports gesture recognition.

1. Is a gesture termed as when user holds the device and shakes it(say upwards, downwards or side- side)?

2. Is a gesture termed as when a finger is placed on the screen and traced UP,DOWN,RIGHT,LEFT? If so what is the difference between touch screen and gestures.

I am confused between 1) and 2) option.

What is a gesture exactly?

Answer 1

As I understand it, a gesture is anytime a user touches the screen and does a pre-defined motion that the system understands. I would venture to say that shaking the phone is not a gesture, but a function of detecting changes in the accelerometers.

Answer 2

From Android's reference web page, a gesture is a hand-drawn shape on a touch screen. It can have one or multiple strokes. Each stroke is a sequence of timed points. A user-defined gesture can be recognized by a GestureLibrary.

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/gesture/Gesture.html

Answer 3

I see gestures as being a type of input pattern that you expect from the user. I.e., you can setup mouse gestures in web browsers to do things like going "Forward" or "Back" in the browse by doing a specific "gesture" (maybe middle mouse button click and moving the mouse left goes "Back").

Answer 4

I'll give a brief answer to your bonus question: Yes, it's quite possible to to character recognition from input gestures on Android. In fact, at least one major vendor has already ported an existing handwriting engine to that platform. Works beautifully, but there's a lot of legal and marketing cruft to take care of as well before it ends up on real devices :(