Why is there no cancel button in Android's progress dialogs?

Question

I\'m facing a head-scratching moment similar to what this person (from Jan 2008) experienced when I realized that there is no cancel button in Android\'s progress dialog or spin

Answer 1

I'm no Android user or developer, but I think the answer given in the linked-to thread is pretty decent: there's a hardware "back" key on all Android devices. Users are supposed to know to press Back to back out of whatever activity they're currently in.

Thus, the UI designers feel it's unnecessary to include a GUI back/cancel button. This could be viewed as the UI application of the DRY principle; if there's already one way of doing something, that's enough.