Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

It's World Usability Day tomorrow (November 14). Will all mobile phones suddenly be intuitive and trouble-free after that? I figure not, but here are a few things I'd like improved:

The industry should start talking about how easy (or not) it is to use specific features in phones, not just present long lists of features.

Industry awards should be given to inventors/providers of the most easy to use products, whether it's devices, client applications or services.

Phones should always be activated for all services at delivery: Less hazzle for the user, more revenue for the operator.

The phone's user interface should be better adapted to the feature set of phones for calling, messaging, media playing, photography, video recording, gaming etc.

Especially gaming is left completely in the dark. See Mobile phones need better controls for gaming for more on this. I don't think the changes need to be big, and the production cost is not likely to be higher. It just seems this use of a phone is completely ignored.

I think keypads are generally more designed for looks than usability, even for simple things like making phone calls. Again, we are not talking major changes here, just apply common sense (like that keys should be tactile and at all pressable).

Phones should use standard connectors, like mini USB for PC connectivity and 3.5" for audio.

It should be possible to charge the phone while it's connected to a PC (ideally via USB), as increasingly people are using phones as wireless modems.

Bluetooth headsets should be charged from the phone's battery, not from a separate power supply. We have enough power supplies already.

Accessing downloaded ringtones, applications etc is too hard. Why not always ask the user right after downloading what the user wants to do with the content?

The list goes on, and I might add more later, but you get my point: Things can be done...

Last year I worked with user interface and usability design and planning at Obigo (a Teleca company) and we defined a process for how to test Obigo's products for usability. We also wrote guidelines for how buttons, display etc should be used across all products. Of course we only dealt with software in this case, so we had no control over what actual buttons and other hardware features were on the phone. We consulted the Usability Lab at Ingvar Kamprad's Design Center (IKDC) across the street.