In part 2 of this series, guest author Serko Artinian, Director/Editor at SERKOART®, explores briefly the differences in user interfaces between the iPhone and the N95-4.
So how important is the GUI ecosystem of a mobile to you? The quick answer that most people give to that question is “it depends”. When going back to S60 from having the dead simple (and gorgeous) iPhone GUI I tended to hesitate, shake my head in disbelief at how anyone got anything done with such an arcane setup which consists mostly of a handful of folders scattered all about in the order in which Symbian/Nokia decided the default layout should be.
After a few days of initially arduous reconfiguration I found order and peace in what began as a test in futility! S60 still has a LONG way to go in terms of being as user friendly as Mac OS X Mobile for iPhone but luckily the user has configuration options, which will help mediate the canvas while Symbian/Nokia get their GUI up to par. After my initial setup time I was able to switch between and launch applications as quickly as I ever could with my iPhone with the added benefit of actually knowing which Apps are running in the background and being able to switch between them without quitting the current application I’m using!
There are a few specific productivity advantages that I feel the iPhone’s GUI has over the N95’s and those will be addressed in a separate section. After all aren’t these both supposed to be considered portable multimedia computers?
