Be trendy, add a touchscreen to your phone (and wipe out the buttons if possible)….
Thomas Menguy | March 15, 2007In its last blog entry, surfing one the wave of button less iPhone clones, C. Enrique Ortiz states the following,
Pictured above are the LG Prada, the Apple iPhone, the “Google Phone”, and the Meizu M8. Will Palm follow the same trend?
…
Yes, that’s right. Think about this shift from hardware to software design; the way of the future in handset design. The handset itself becomes pretty much a “generic” apparatus: connected or network-aware, with high-quality sound, and high-quality LCD with touch-screen, and totally software driven – the look and feel, the user experience, and all or most of user interactions.
C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog: The future of handset design: from hardware to software
While, as a software developer I may look at this kind of vision with envy, but intuition … and practice lead me to really challenge this view where the hardware would be completely commoditized to allow full software creativity.
Be prepared to that mobile software vendors: in real life (at least in Europe) a phone is first chosen because it is sexy/good looking! See the success of the LG Chocolate (and its Samsung carbon copy, the E900) , or the upcoming Shine or Prada phone: they are simply handsome, and my wife doesn’t bother about the so-so and flacky UI and usability flows of her E900 (ok to be honest now she has one for a few weeks, she IS complaining…but the buy decision was based on hardware look only). Do yourself a favor and check this really funny Guardian Article about the E900 and its glorified unusable UI and touch sensitive buttons (found via the always refreshingly cynical Techype)
So yes hardware design matters, that’s a fact, and am I the only one to loooove hardware buttons? I’m a long time Palm fan, used to stylus, touchscreen and so on, but to be honest, on my treo 650, I only use the keyboard and nav pad, I’ve even lost the stylus and really I don’t need it. Did you ever tried a remote control for your TV based on a touchscreen (like Phillips did some time ago)? wow, awkward, no tactile feedback, the screen is collecting all what your fingers are collecting…really poor design.
But the worst aspect of the “all touchscreen” aspect in that you always needs your two hands to do anything, even answering a call! and this is killer for me, really, cause doing every operation with one hand is something I’m now so accustomed to.
So yes the iPhone and its clones may lead to new user experience studies, but I really think that to bring a really good user experience you need to master the whole design process, from hardware to software … to network services. For sure today it is more the hardware design that leads the pack, software vendors trying to bring something new (see the last Vision Mobile Article on this one) …and Operator continuing adding some, hum, crap to the user experience (look for Orange Home Screen in google … and oh joy the first answer are “help me to get ride of the Orange Home screen” ).
So yes software vendor may have more room to innovate, but phone makers are learning fast:
- Palm is getting its software back, so under control
- SE bought UIQ…for the same reason
- Nokia has S60 and Maemo
- Moto is pushing its Linux Platform
If this is not a sign ….
What do you think?
Thomas