Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Tuesday, June 27, 2006
UI design: How not to design an auto keylock
I'm generally a fan of Sony Ericsson phones, as they are pretty solid on features and build, and the later years they've also improved significantly on the aesthetics.
One thing that's been around for a long time, and clearly shows age, is the auto keylock feature that I'm definitely not a fan of. I simply ask for an improvement.
I used K608i and W810i as test phones. They are both candybar style phones and their keylocks work exactly the same, hence no improvement even in the very latest models. Obviously a keylock is only relevant for a candybar phone. Don't confuse this with a SIM lock.
These are the main issues:
Note that if auto keylock is turned off (which it is by default) then issue 2 is likely to occur often.
Lately, Swedish operators have received complaints from customers about "ghost" SMSs, and haven't been able to find out why these are sent. The explanation might be above.
The solution for a Sony Ericsson loving consumer is to add an entry called e.g. "Aaaa" to the phone book with a false phone number (which will stop it from sending SMSs by mistake), or if you are in shopping mood get one of the clamshells. The solution for Sony Ericsson is to improve on the above, e.g. by adding a separate "hidden" slide button, like on the original Sony phones.
It should be noted that I've been in contact with Sony Ericsson via Developer Forum, but no one wants to touch this issue.
'nough said. Do you agree or disagree?
One thing that's been around for a long time, and clearly shows age, is the auto keylock feature that I'm definitely not a fan of. I simply ask for an improvement.
I used K608i and W810i as test phones. They are both candybar style phones and their keylocks work exactly the same, hence no improvement even in the very latest models. Obviously a keylock is only relevant for a candybar phone. Don't confuse this with a SIM lock.
These are the main issues:
- Auto keylock works only on the idle screen. If you've navigated away from it, it simply won't activate. I often browse or look at messages, run Java applications etc, and I want to be able to leave the phone there when I move over to non-phone activities.
- While in e.g. the main menu, if you press down the joystick enough times you've actually sent an empty SMS to the first person in your address book. If the phone is in your pocket you might actually send a lot of empty messages to an increasingly dumbfounded recipient. I've done this a gazillion times, and now I have no friends left (actually I didn't have any before, but that's not the point...).
- Deactivation of the keylock is done by pressing "*" and the right softkey. That sounds simple enough right? The problem is that due to the above issues I often first press any other key to just get the backlight turned on, so I see where I'm at, and then the deactivation gets out of sync, which leads to an info dialog which makes it even more out of sync. Sounds trivial, but is actually quite annoying.
Note that if auto keylock is turned off (which it is by default) then issue 2 is likely to occur often.
Lately, Swedish operators have received complaints from customers about "ghost" SMSs, and haven't been able to find out why these are sent. The explanation might be above.
The solution for a Sony Ericsson loving consumer is to add an entry called e.g. "Aaaa" to the phone book with a false phone number (which will stop it from sending SMSs by mistake), or if you are in shopping mood get one of the clamshells. The solution for Sony Ericsson is to improve on the above, e.g. by adding a separate "hidden" slide button, like on the original Sony phones.
It should be noted that I've been in contact with Sony Ericsson via Developer Forum, but no one wants to touch this issue.
'nough said. Do you agree or disagree?
