Just wanted to add my voice to this thread. I love my 9300, but the removal of home/end on the FN+arrow keys is a completely baffling decision. Every laptop I've used recently has this, even if it isn't directly labelled on the keyboard. There's no downside to adding this. Please, Dell, add this functionality to the next BIOS upgrade!

Any news about this? I also got surprised with this and it is just a nightmare to move around this way.

I'm with you. I was so shocked, coming from XPS 15, then moved to Lenovo, now I just moved back to XPS 17.

I'm so used with fn+left arrow being home and fn+right arrow being the end. 

I do hope Dell can resolve this issue in the next BIOS update. Removing that in the first place is just a big no from a Software Dev perspective.

Thank you for all your efforts @jphughan ! - this HOME/END issue is a true pain, when working a lot in an editor... Any news from DELL? 

So how do we make this thread visible to somebody in Dell who can actually make the decision to get the functionality back through BIOS update?

@michnovka  I included a link to this thread and several others just like it in the internal escalation report I submitted to Dell about this, as well as a "nudge mention" that Lenovo is already using the design that people are asking for here, namely allowing Fn+Left/Right to be used as Home/End even though those keys aren't marked as such.  Unfortunately @K-m0  I haven't heard back from anybody there.  And realistically I wasn't all that optimistic.  I submitted it because I know this keyboard layout change would drive me nuts and therefore probably keep me from buying the system at all, so I didn't want to pass on an opportunity to help affected users and arguably even help Dell avoid dissatisfaction, returns, and missed sales over this issue.  That's especially true because from a technical standpoint, a firmware update that delivered this would be trivial to develop, and it's not like Fn+Left/Right are being used for anything else right now, so there would seem to be no downsides.

But at the end of the day, the fact is that the XPS 13 used to use Fn+Left/Right for Home/End, and Dell changed it.  So this isn't a "bug".  It was a conscious design change that somebody made, which means that changing it BACK would require convincing whoever thought it was a good idea (can't imagine why....) that they actually wrong, and then to get them to approve "fixing" their poor design choice -- AND getting them to do that retroactively for existing systems rather than just going forward on new models.

But what's actually happening is that this change that appeared on the XPS 13 a few generations ago has now just been expanded to the new XPS 15 9500 and XPS 17 9700 -- where it's now triggering complaints by users of those systems as well.

I'll keep following up about this and report back if I hear anything, though.

thanks @jphughan for exhaustive answer! I am just wondering on how and what can we do to escalate this issue so that it will hit an attention of the right person at DELL?! The only reply in the thread from the dell authority has nothing to do with the actual problem...

"The only reply in the thread from the dell authority has nothing to do with the actual problem..."

That is a rather friendly way to put it. I find that one Dell reply almost insulting. Someone buys a laptop in the range of $1000-$2000 and customer support does not even take their time to properly read the customer's question. Instead@DELL-Cares assumes that the customer did not properly RTFM and lectures him about the Fn-lock function.

So, yeah, Dell, if you are counting: Here is another annoyed customer waiting for a Home/End-Key fix.

(But after I received a dead XPS 13 and the only option from customer support was to send in the brand new $2000 laptop for 6 weeks, I will probably be gone for the next purchase anyways.)

While looking at laptops to recommend to another user here based on his requirements and preferences, I've noticed that this new Home/End placement is now being applied even to Latitude systems such as the 5510 and 9510.  So this decision doesn't even seem to be limited to the XPS model line specifically.  I'm especially surprised to see this change on the Latitude side given that those are business-oriented machines and therefore tend to have more optimizations for power users.  For example, some Latitude systems have dedicated PgUp/PgDn buttons in the arrow key area rather than having those mapped to Fn+Up/Dn.  But this also reinforces my suspicion that this was a deliberate design choice and therefore that getting a "concession" implemented in the form of a firmware update will require getting whoever made this choice to admit that maybe it wasn't a great choice in the first place.  Sigh....

One thing I want to mention that I have previously stumbled on a thread were people asked for physical home/end/page up-down keys because they were so used to it on other keyboards. So you could say dell is kind of somewhat listening to some user input...
I was considering xps 9300/9500 for me and my wife but since it _still_ does not have fn+keys navigation and power button is in keyboard layout I am reeeally thinking about some 14'' lenovo laptop. Maybe even wait for some ryzen cpus. Maybe even wait for thunderbolt 4... (5 year later... damn, I really need a new laptop).

I hadn't checked this for a few months.  They still haven't fixed this yet?

If it wasn't for me mapping F to Home and L to End on my vim-based editors this would be driving me up the wall by now.

I've brought this up in the two customer feedback surveys Dell sent me... apparently to no avail.

+1 for enabling 'Fn + left arrow' as 'Home'

I wonder how many production hours this is costing to the development community (let aside frustration)

I started a new tag in Twitter #homeButtonBack as a way to vent my frustration for the day. I am not the kind of influencer that you will see with more than .... 10 followers , so not expecting any traction. Sharing just in case you need to vent as well

I also contacted Support and they just read to me all the comments from this nice thread, but no official confirmation that Dell is actually working on a fix.

Will keep pushing and checking out this thread

Big +1 from me, this is absolutely needed feature for any decent text editing, especially programming.

Hope Dell won't ignore the community and give us at least some clarification.