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

everything you need to know:

[yagu]

Everything you need to know starts in paragraph eighteen:

Unfortunately, after they did such a great job designing the hardware, T-Mobile's chief executive and his ex-Apple designer punted on the software. They equipped this phone with Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6. As it turns out, that decision is just as much an impediment to the Shadow's greatness as AT&T exclusivity is to the iPhone.

And, this isn't even Microsoft's fault! It's T-Mobile's CEO who had the hubris to think he could design this thing just like Jobs. Not.

I think the article actually goes a little easy on the critique of the hardware. I doesn't break any ground. It has too many or too few buttons. The middle ground they took with the Blackberry licensed keyboard was just plain wrong. This phone is just a mess. Apple kinda pulled this feat off, designing a do-everything phone (I kinda disagree, btw), and now everybody else thinks they can do it too. They even think it's the right thing to do (it's not).

But, what were they thinking going with MS Mobile? Wth? Sheeesh... it even comes with a Task Monitor? Yeah, I'm gonna help my Dad with his new phone... "Bring up the Task Monitor... now click on the Processes tab. Now click on the CPU column twice. What's eating up the most CPU? ... That's the central processing unit.... ummm... Okay, now highlight the one eating up all the CPU and click the "End Process" button.... " Not.

Another place the article "gets it wrong" trying to be kind in his critique:

Now, there are certainly advantages to having Microsoft inside your phone. For example, this phone can open and edit (but not create) Microsoft Office documents.

Wrong! That's not an advantage, that's insane. At least, I can't remember the last time I was looking at my cellphone thinking, "Damn, I wish right now I could open up a Word document!", not even if one was attached to an e-mail.

I'm still waiting for the phone that sounds and works like a phone.

Bit of trivia, speaking of phones... Know what the little graphic on the Sprint logo stands for? Didn't think so. It represents a stop-motion pin dropping. Remember when Sprint's commercials were about phone call sound quality and how it was so good you could hear a pin drop? Didn't think so. Please, oh, please, let me hear the pin drop again!

Re:everything you need to know:

[m2943]

And, this isn't even Microsoft's fault!

According to the article, it is:

Unfortunately, after they did such a great job designing the hardware, T-Mobile's chief executive and his ex-Apple designer punted on the software. They equipped this phone with Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6. As it turns out, that decision is just as much an impediment to the Shadow's greatness as AT&T exclusivity is to the iPhone.

(The 20 key hardware is the same used by Blackberry and Sony, by the way, and generally works pretty well... certainly a lot better than T9.)

But, what were they thinking going with MS Mobile?

For the US market, what choice did they have? Apple, PalmOS, and Blackberry can't be licensed, Symbian is likely expensive and nearly as messy as Windows Mobile. And they didn't have the time and resources to do their own Linux-based system. So, for a smartphone like that, Windows Mobile is the obvious choice for companies like HTC and T-Mobile right now. You can't fault them for that.

With Android, of course, they do... let's hope that T-Mobile is smart and makes that choice. HTC (the maker of the Shadow) is already on board with Android...

Re:everything you need to know:

[DMoylan]

> Symbian is likely expensive

have to object to that.

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/6203_204_million_Symbian_OS_handset.php

The average royalty per handset is now $4.80 (down from $5.20 last year following license fee reduction doesn't sound that expensive.

> nearly as messy

now this is personal opinion but you couldn't pay me to use windows mobile. i've seen every iteration in devices my boss buys and they all have problems that make them completely unusable. battery life, crashes, sync problems.

while symbian could be improved i have no problems using it every day since a nokia 3650 -> nokia n70 -> e61 -> e61i. the current phone e61i is used every day to

* take screenshots when away from my desk to look up errors when i get a chance.
* take pictures of a4 documents so i no longer need to locate a working photocopier for personal records.
* working on long emails that i get 2-3 times a year from a correspondent. 200k+ documents been worked on when on the bus amongst others.
* gmail application allows me to check email with or without wifi. bloody fantastic! i could get push email but i find the concept as annoying as sms.
* video spectacular crashes so that i can email them to the supplier who claims that what i'm reporting is impossible.
* notepad been used for every password username that comes my way. personal code used to encrypt the information before somebody points out that the builtin has none. mind you i know a symbian user who added a python wiki to his phone with encryption so could use that in the future if i really wanted.
* qreader for reading ebooks.
* web browser for when i need to check stuff out and about. i'm on a pay as you go contract so have to pay for every byte but sometimes a few k from google will give all the answers.
* spreadsheets for personal accounts.
* nokia maps for navigation
* still trying to learn python on the little bugger. i'll get there. i'll get there.
* planning on helping http://www.openstreetmap.org/ map out dublin by linking on a bt gps. will have to see how that goes.
* plugs in as a usb device to a pc or mac so have used it as a thumb drive when necessary.

for me the killer app is taking notes. was at a software conference at the start of the year. loads of people taking notes on laptops over 3 days. and hunting for power supplies at the end of every talk. the e61 (was before the e61i) was slower to type on but the battery lasted the 3 days with top ups from a battery powered charger at night. much more convenient.

if it were that messy i could get none of the above done. it does depend on what you use your phone for though.

In the same vein

[mike260]

Joel Spolsky does an entertaining job of ripping another phone with poorly-designed software to pieces here.

Right, "wrestling power"

[Shihar]

...talking about how Apple is changing the phone game by wrestling power from the carriers... Right. Apple has certainly wrestled control away from the carriers. Now, instead of just paying the carrier blood money and selling our soul for two years, we get to pay both Apple AND the carrier... and still sell our soul away for two years. Maybe Nokia can compete with Apple by coming out with a phone where I need to sign a 5 year soul sucking deal with the hell (like AT&T, but more pleasant), have the phone chomp on my balls while it is in my pocket, eat my first born child, and get a direct hookup to my bank account from where it funnels money into everyone's pocket but my own.

Come on Google, buy the damn spectrum, open it up, and lets say fuck you to the ass pounding consumers are getting in the US cellular market.

Re:Right, "wrestling power"

[recoiledsnake]

I just can't believe people still take Apple's side on this. The phone is not really open, you can't make your own ringtones from MP3s. You can't see the filesystem. Both of which you can even do with a MS WM phone. All iPhone got is Visual Voicemail from the carrier's side.

I am just going to repost what in a post below.

Lets do the math on Apple "wresting power" from the carriers. Carriers typically discount the phone from the retail unlocked price. For example, a HTC Mogul(a 3G phone with a ton of features) has a retail unlocked price of around $550. Sprint sells it for $300 with a 2 year contract. In fact, many companies deeply discount phones to such an extent that you can get $50 BACK with some phones(check on Amazon or Wirefly). The phone manufacturer makes a fixed profit and moves on.

But what did Apple do with the iPhone? It charges a hefty premium(note how they were able to drop $200 off the phone in just 2 months) and makes a nice profit with the price($400 now or whatever) and then makes about $450 MORE over two years from the $60 a month that AT&T charges the consumer who takes up the 2 yr contract. The user gets a nice phone, visual voicemail etc. in return, at a VERY HIGH premium.

After a ton of iPhone articles and about a hundered +5 insightful comments on Slashdot about how Apple will "change the game" and make it better for consumers, that is the bottomline. This is the real reason why Apple hates unlockers and not just because of exclusivity contract with AT&T. For every unlocker they potentially lose close to $400.

Apple did change the game of carriers ripping off customers and ushered in the golden era of carriers AND phone companies raping consumers. All this right under the noses of otherwise wise and intelligent people who seem to have been taken in by the "RDF.

T-mobile designe something ? Not

[S3D]

It's not designed by T-mobile of cause (if it was sarcasm on the part of TFA, it was too veilded IMO) It was designed by HTC. It is in fact HTC Juno. As the HTC is a part of Google led Open Handset Alliance may be their next phones would fare better.

Article in a nutshell...

[diesel66]

Windows Mobile 6 == teh sux

This message brought to you by: Article in a Nutshell (TM)

Cell phones are pieces of shit.

[Entropius]

I've never found one that's well-designed. They may exist, but I've never had or seen one.

What I want:

1) The ability to turn the volume up or down in a wider scale than they give us. If I can't hear someone with the volume at max (usually when they're on a landline), the scale needs to go higher. My phone goes up to five; it should go up to eleven. It's a device whose principal function is the capture and transmission of sound, yet it has ONE thing you can control about the sound: inbound sound volume, in a limited range. This is ridiculous. This is stuff that could be included essentially for free, since it's all software that doesn't take much processing power. For instance, it'd be nice to have some sort of intelligent parametric EQ. Sometimes you get someone on the other end with a sucky headset and it'd be nice to be able to fix it yourself or have the phone do it for you.

2) The phone to tell me what the hell it's doing signal-wise. I've been standing on top of a mountain and looking over a canyon at a cell tower (~2 miles distant) and have no signal. Sometimes calls get dropped even though I have four "bars" of signal. Is it a SNR problem? The phone trying to do a tower swap and failing? Who the fuck knows? Give me frickin' iwconfig, please. It's like the Windows boot sequence. Either it works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, who knows what went wrong. But Windows at least has Safe Mode...

3) A phone that doesn't fucking break. My old phone had a keypad that kept going bad. My new phone now thinks that there's a headset plugged into it when there's not. Sometimes it thinks I don't have a SIM card in it.

4) I hesitate to suggest this since they seem incapable of getting even simple things right, but replace SIM cards with SD cards (they're effectively a commodity now, $20 for 2GB). Poof, instant long-play pocket audio recorder!

Re:Cell phones are pieces of shit.

[zlogic]

I hesitate to suggest this since they seem incapable of getting even simple things right, but replace SIM cards with SD cards (they're effectively a commodity now, $20 for 2GB). Poof, instant long-play pocket audio recorder! SIM cards are more than simply memory. They store a bunch of encryption keys; but the keys are NOT transferred into the phone and a lot of encryption is done on the SIM card, so technically it's a very simple processor. It's done so that someone doesn't steal your phone, clone the SIM card, assign any PIN they like and get "free" calls as well as a "free" phone.
Oh, and most modern phones (except really cheap ones) have an SD, miniSD or microSD slot.

The ability to turn the volume up or down in a wider scale than they give us. Most phones have a speakerphone mode that makes it really loud; turn it on but turn down the volume, this way it'll be louder than normal but not deafening.

The phone to tell me what the hell it's doing signal-wise. It may be anything, including the carrier. For example here in Russia most prepaid contracts (having a $5-$10 monthly ARPU) have a much lower priority and their calls are dropped or rejected if network load exceeding limits; they are also switched into half-duplex mode when bandwidth is needed for something more important. I think that "bars" are lowered if the signal is too noisy.

A phone that doesn't fucking break. My Siemens phone got chewed by a dog, its screen (the protective glass, not the display itself) now has a hole in it (because of the dog), the battery is dead because of awful handling (but still lasts a day or two), I opened it twice just to look inside and it was dropped a million times. Everything (except the battery) works perfectly! My new phone is a Sony Ericsson and I've never had any problems with it yet.

Re:No Design Experience

[caffeinemessiah]

then I realised the author has probably never had any real mobile OS design experience.

You don't need mobile OS design experience to figure out that a phone has a terrible user interface. While I agree that his comment on a two-button unlock sequence is uncalled for (why have a lock function that unlocks with a single, accidental keypress?), but other than that I think all his gripes are perfectly justified because they deal with the end-user experience.

Mystifying

[StarKruzr]

I'm still waiting for the phone that sounds and works like a phone.

Why does everyone say this as if it doesn't exist?

I suspect it is because they want their posts to sound as though they possess some real down-home 'Murrican wisdom. Jesus. How many counterexamples do I have to find? All of these are "phones that look and act like phones."

Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?

Wrong! That's not an advantage, that's insane. At least, I can't remember the last time I was looking at my cellphone thinking, "Damn, I wish right now I could open up a Word document!", not even if one was attached to an e-mail.

Yesterday, when I got an email from my advisor. Thankfully, I had my iPhone at the ready and it was quite capable of opening the document. I was able to answer her question immediately and it made me look like I was really on top of things. I guess that makes me "insane."

Re:Mystifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?

Because they want a good quality camera, phone, PDA, laptop, etc. not a all-in-one gadget with a mediocre everything?

Re:Mystifying

[DeadDecoy]

Ya but for every one of you, there are ten non-technical people for whom the phone/pda/camera/laptop/mp3 player/blender/sink is good enough. For some people the utility of having a swiss-army-phone outweighs that of having a specialized device because they don't care about quality, just something that gets the job done.

Re:Mystifying

[TheRaven64]

Because the vast majority of the time, in the best case, you end up with a device which is a mediocre camera, a mediocre phone, a mediocre PDA, and a mediocre laptop. Most of the time, if you don't go for a converged device, you end up with a mediocre camera, a mediocre phone and a mediocre PDA and you have to carry three mediocre devices around with you.

Yes, I still miss my Psion Series 3.

Re:Mystifying

[p!ngu]

"I couldn't care less" --> literal.
"I could care less" --> sarcasm, or abbreviated form of "I could care less (but I don't know how)"

Re:Mystifying

[1u3hr]

Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?

Because I just want to cary around a phone. Because I would rather not pay for the other features and have them making the phone heavier, more expensive, more complex and fragile and shorter battery life. Because I don't have or want a PDA, and when I need a laptop, I want a full size keyboard and screen. I only want a camera when I'm on vacation.

If soemeone wants a screwdriver, don't force them to buy a Swiss Army knife.

Re:No Design Experience

[badasscat]

What "necessity" is there to require two button presses? This sounds like pre-iPhone thinking. Not that I'm a huge fan of the iPhone, but one thing it has done is forced people to rethink both what's practical and what's "necessary" in a phone.

I had a Siemens candy-bar style phone about 5 years ago that only required one button press to unlock. I mention that it was a candy bar because that means its buttons were unprotected, and I walked around with it in my pocket. Never once did I unlock it by mistake. All it takes is a combination of the right resistance on the buttons and requiring a certain length of a button press (1-2 seconds) in order to successfully unlock it.

People have a tendency to get tunnel vision, and to get locked in to a certain way of thinking (no pun intended) just because "that's the way it's done". This is probably why, after 5 earlier iterations, Windows Mobile still requires going into a menu to hit "delete" on a text message. The one thing I will give Steve Jobs credit for is looking at things like this and saying "why does it have to be done this way?" If there's no good answer, he throws everything out and starts over.

That kind of questioning needs to be done at every level of every single product design. You can't just continuously carry things over from iteration to iteration without any justification as to why.

"wresting power from the carriers"?

[Thaelon]

I fail to see how "wresting power from the carriers" is a bad thing. They do evil things with it. Two year contracts with "early termination fees". Phones locked into their service. Phones with software or hardware they've deliberately crippled (Verizon I'm looking at you). Phones that have had a nice GUI replaced with their branded crap. Charging absurd prices for downloads. Padding HTTP headers with data so you use more of their outrageously overpriced data plans. I could go on and on. But if you ask me, the more power the phones wrest from the carriers, the better off we'll be.

Windows Mobile is the Achilles Heel

[Da_Biz]

Frankly, Windows Mobile 6 is a mess. Common features require an infinitude of taps and clicks, and the ones you need most are buried in menus. Apparently the Windows Mobile 6 team learned absolutely nothing from Windows Mobile 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

I wholeheartedly agree: I received a low-end HP PDA years ago for Christmas. Windows Mobile worked so poorly that I didn't even bother to get the thing replaced on warranty when it broke within two months (battery couldn't hold a charge to save its life).

I already miss the 'antiquated' Palm OS that ran on my Treo. The article was nice enough to bring up a couple of my favorite reasons as to why...

First of all, a cellphone should not display a "wait" cursor. Ever. And definitely not almost every time you change screens, as on the Shadow.

One of my favorites: I run a nearly stock version of WM6 on my HTC Mogul phone, with the only additions being the free version of Epocrates and an SPB Diary application. My phone has a more-than-adequate CPU, yet still lags while switching screens.

Do I need to "wipe and load" my phone to make it run faster? Sheesh.

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.

Amen! I also love how the phone has a knack for running out of memory right when an important call comes in. There's nothing more frustrating than a ringing phone that won't show me the phone screen and where the buttons suddenly don't work.

Re:Windows Mobile Classic

[NMerriam]

He's not assuming anything about other versions of the software. He's saying the software on this phone sucks, which you seem to agree with. If MS released a version of XP without mouse support...that would suck, too. The existence of another version would not in any way invalidate the suckiness of the mouseless version. If the software is only good for touchscreen devices (which I would disagree with, it still sucks even on touchscreen devices), then it sounds like MS's big mistake was licensing it for use on non-touchscreen devices.

Why would he "eat his words" about a device he's never written about?

Re:No Design Experience

[phoenix_rizzen]

My original cell phone, a Panasonic TX-220, had a single-keypress lock function. However, it required holding down the lock key for 2 seconds to enable or disable (with an auto-enable after 10 seconds feature). Never had it accidentally lock or unlock on me, and I found it to be a lot more usable than the "top-left button, then bottom-left button" process to un/lock my current phone.

Don't dismiss a single-key lock process because you can't think of a way to make it work. :) It's been done before, it's been done well, and lots of us really miss it.

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.

Re:My Comments to his Suggestions

[GarfBond]

I can go out and buy an iPhone, Nokia, or whatever, or I can buy this. Why should I care whether it's a WM6 problem or a t-mob problem? It should be usable out of the box.

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?

One size fits all

[Sanat]

Whenever I see a device that tries to be "Everything" I am taken back to the 60's to McNamara and his desire to have an airplane that had "commonality" and could serve as the "end all".

The F111 was designed to be both a fighter and a bomber. It was too heavy to land on carriers and could not carry the required equipment and payloads required by the Navy... did not even have gatlin guns on it for a while, and it was too small to carry a large payload and the range was too short to be an effective bomber.

So is the T-mobile a F111 or can these problems be worked out?

This is a time for the designer to eat his/her pride and make it work... if that is possible. It wasn't possible with the F111 and the T-mobile remains to be seen.