How Not to Build a Cellphone

Jamie found an NYT story about a new t-mobile Shadow phone which starts off by talking about how Apple is changing the phone game by wrestling power from the carriers, and then discussing what could be a reasonable piece of hardware. And then how it is wrecked by software. The phone has wait screens, a task manager, odd error messages etc. Makes for an amusing read.

Comments

My Comments to his Suggestions

[DavidD_CA]

When you're finished looking at a text message, you should not have to open a menu to find the Delete command. When you're on a phone call, you should not have to open a menu to find the Speakerphone command. When you take a picture, you should not have to open a menu to find Send and Delete. WM6 allows you to hold down "D" for a second and the message deletes.

A cellphone should not have a Task Manager. You should never have to worry about quitting programs because you've used up too much memory. I see the Task Manager as a way to swap between different apps. I can look at Live Maps, then switch to my email, look something up, copy and paste it back into Live Maps, answer a call, and switch back to the map, etc. The Task Manager allows me to do this quickly.

A cellphone should auto-format phone numbers with parentheses and hyphens when you enter them in the address book. Mine seems to do that just fine, though I normally add my photos via Outlook and sync. Perhaps he is adding them to the SIM card which may not support that?

If the phone has a navigation wheel, the big, clickable center button should always mean "O.K." Always. It should never do nothing, even when there's an O.K. label over one of the tiny softkeys. This is most definitely a choice of TMobile, since they designed the hardware. My WM6 device (HTC TyTn II) has a scroll wheel which clicks in, selecting whatever I've selected. There's also two OK buttons on the device (side and front) which click OK.

When you're assigning a contact to one of the five "My Faves" slots, a T-Mobile calling plan that gives you unlimited calls to your five favorite numbers, three confirmation screens is two too many. That's T-Mobile's software, not WM6. The HTC homescreen program allows me to set my seven favorites with two clicks each.

If it takes four presses on the More button just to see everything in the Start menu -- and you provide no direct way to get to the first page from the last -- you need to redesign. This is as simple as rearranging your Start Menu shortcuts in the Windows directory. You can do this from the device or when ActiveSync'd. I agree that it should come "cleaner" from the manufacturer, but that's T-Mobile's fault.

A locking feature, which prevents the buttons from being pushed accidentally in a purse or pocket, is nice. But it should be optional. And one button press should suffice to unlock it; two in sequence is just annoying. This is all configurable in the control panel. On my TyTn II, I tap the power button to lock, and tap it again to unlock. I hold it down to shut down the phone.

I think this person needs to understand what the difference is between WM6 and a company that has jacked it up. WM6 is not perfect, but the issues he's blasted here are either because of TMobile's implementation, or his lack of knowledge of the features of the OS.

AHHHH!!!!!!!!

[NickCatal]

Geesh... All I want is a freaking phone that allows me to play music and videos (podcasts), install 3rd party apps, has 3G connectivity & wifi, has gmail and push-email support, syncs with an ical feed, has an IM client that works with all the major networks, allows me to teather my laptop via bluetooth to the phone, has A2DP, and a web browser that renders like a web browser should (WITH FLASH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.) Make your own MP3/AAC ringtones. Oh, and it needs to be on more than one carrier.

And it needs to be, most importantly, a GOOD PHONE. With GOOD RECEPTION, SOUND QUALITY, AND DIALING SHOULD BE SUPER-SIMPLE!!

Photo and video opportunities so that you could upload to Youtube/Flickr/Facebook would be cool too, but I'm OK without having that.

How fucking hard is it to roll that out???? Seriously, how fucking hard?