Smartphones Show #30 – Touchscreens

I’m afraid a personal rant is all it is. I don’t deny there are issues with a touch screen interface, but there are many advantages as well that Steve simply chose not to mention. In my mind, it’s far more intuitive when you’re using, for example, the calendar application, to tap on an empty slot in the day or week view and schedule an appointment rather than having to click through three levels of badly designed menus. IMHO, the over reliance on the menu scheme in S60 is an important reason for the bad UI that you see in so many applications. I also suspect having a touch screen interface encourages more innovative use of screen space – just ask any Treo user.

As for the argument that you need to be able to use these phones in single-handed fashion, I really don’t buy it. I challenge you to use the browser on the E61 single-handed – it’s simply not possible. Or type out an email of any reasonable length single-handed. I agree a stylus is clunky, bu that in and of itself is no reason to discard the touch screen interface.

What I’d really like is a happy medium – ironically, the S60 OSS browser itself provides a possible solution. A RESPONSIVE system-level cursor that serves as an ALTERNATIVE to using an external stylus would be really welcome. In other words, implement a touch screen, but provide a stylus-free method of navigating it.

Nokia claims their smartphones are increasing approximating desktop computers when it comes to their processing power and communication and multimedia capabilities. The touch screen versus menus argument is beginning to resemble the GUI vs CLI argument in that sphere. There’s room for both, and a happy medium is really what’s needed.

I’m afraid a personal rant is all it is. I don’t deny there are issues with a touch screen interface, but there are many advantages as well that Steve simply chose not to mention. In my mind, it’s far more intuitive when you’re using, for example, the calendar application, to tap on an empty slot in the day or week view and schedule an appointment rather than having to click through three levels of badly designed menus. IMHO, the over reliance on the menu scheme in S60 is an important reason for the bad UI that you see in so many applications. I also suspect having a touch screen interface encourages more innovative use of screen space – just ask any Treo user.

As for the argument that you need to be able to use these phones in single-handed fashion, I really don’t buy it. I challenge you to use the browser on the E61 single-handed – it’s simply not possible. Or type out an email of any reasonable length single-handed. I agree a stylus is clunky, bu that in and of itself is no reason to discard the touch screen interface.

What I’d really like is a happy medium – ironically, the S60 OSS browser itself provides a possible solution. A RESPONSIVE system-level cursor that serves as an ALTERNATIVE to using an external stylus would be really welcome. In other words, implement a touch screen, but provide a stylus-free method of navigating it.

Nokia claims their smartphones are increasing approximating desktop computers when it comes to their processing power and communication and multimedia capabilities. The touch screen versus menus argument is beginning to resemble the GUI vs CLI argument in that sphere. There’s room for both, and a happy medium is really what’s needed.

I’ll agree that a great idea is a medium. I currently have the SE P910a as a toy phone (it’s actually for sale). Based on purely the design, this is one of the coolest phones, ever. The keypad is a full numeric with T9. You can use it like a regular candybar phone. However, once you flip that down, on the reverse side is a full QWERTY keyboard (which is surprisingly useful) and it opens the screen up to a full touchscreen.

There’s some functionality limits with the P910a. It only uses UIQ 2, has GPRS (no EDGE), a crappy VGA cam (crappy even for VGA), and it’s huge. However, it was also released I think in 2004. If that EXACT design was updated feature-wise, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.

However, other than that, I agree with Steve, that touchscreen just isn’t usable for a mobility-driven device. I had the Cingular 8125 (I believe it’s the HTC Wizard) for a few weeks. Even with such a nice big touchscreen and big buttons on the phone screen, it simply was not usable in any mobile position. Walking, driving, anywhere other than sitting still focusing entirely on the device it was near useless.

I’ll agree that a great idea is a medium. I currently have the SE P910a as a toy phone (it’s actually for sale). Based on purely the design, this is one of the coolest phones, ever. The keypad is a full numeric with T9. You can use it like a regular candybar phone. However, once you flip that down, on the reverse side is a full QWERTY keyboard (which is surprisingly useful) and it opens the screen up to a full touchscreen.

There’s some functionality limits with the P910a. It only uses UIQ 2, has GPRS (no EDGE), a crappy VGA cam (crappy even for VGA), and it’s huge. However, it was also released I think in 2004. If that EXACT design was updated feature-wise, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.

However, other than that, I agree with Steve, that touchscreen just isn’t usable for a mobility-driven device. I had the Cingular 8125 (I believe it’s the HTC Wizard) for a few weeks. Even with such a nice big touchscreen and big buttons on the phone screen, it simply was not usable in any mobile position. Walking, driving, anywhere other than sitting still focusing entirely on the device it was near useless.