[morsch]

How is Google preventing hardware buttons? Sony's most recent phones (Xperia X) have dedicated photo buttons; and that's a longstanding Xperia feature. I doubt they're the only ones.

Android defaults to on-screen bottom-row buttons (to reduce bezel size), but the OS supports off-screen buttons just fine, and phones with dedicated buttons exist.

[GFischer]

I'm obviously mistaken then, sorry. I believe I read that at one time there were some rules or guidelines for hardware manufacturers that wanted to be Google certified (and have Play Store and all that). I'm trying to google that and coming up short, so I must have been confused.