I love S60. But there are times when things get so messed up, I just want to bang my head against the wall and scream in agony “How the hell did you come up with that?!”. Take Nokia’s E71 and the task of zooming in and out. It’s supposed to be easy, simple. Dream on! Someone inside Nokia or S60, or both actually, decided that zooming in and out SHOULD NOT use the same buttons in different applications, go figure.
- So we first have the Gallery, where zooming in and out of an image requires you to press Fn+5 and Fn+0 respectively. On other non-Nseries S60 devices, zooming is usually done through 5 and 0 keys. You would have thought that they would’ve made the numeric function of the 5 and 0 keys readily available in the Gallery on the E71′s qwerty. Nope, they didn’t. You NEED to press a combination of Fn and your shortcut key to do something as simple as zooming, when you have more than THIRTY keys under your thumb on the E71′s keyboard!
- Second is the S60 Web Browser, where zooming in and out is done through the * and # keys. A tiny bit simpler than the Gallery, since admittedly it’s the same as other S60 devices and there is no need for a combination with Fn because the numeric mode is available by default for the shortcut keys.
- Third, there’s the awesomeness of Nokia Maps which uses on the E71 a totally different combination than ANY S60 device out there for zooming in and out: Shift and Backspace. That’s because if you press any other key, the search mode of Nokia Maps will be triggered. Duh!
- Last but of course not least, the Camera application, where zooming in and out is done through the up and down keys of the d-pad. This is obviously because the E71 isn’t an Nseries, and hence there’s a big No-No on using the volume keys for zoom.
Are you kidding me?!
If an S60 newbie bought the E71 today and asked me if there’s a shortcut to zoom in and out on his device, what am I supposed to answer him: “Get me a blackboard and some chalk, get yourself a paper and a pen, because this is going to be one LONG lesson”? I can never, ever, find a decent reason to explain a schism like that in the user experience. Not in this day and age. Not when other manufacturers and OS designers are killing themselves to make things simpler for the user.
I hear you ask what should’ve been done to solve this issue? Well first, there is the genius Nseries-only thought of using the volume keys for zooming in and out in the Camera and the Gallery. How about expanding that thought and applying it to all default applications that have a zoom option? I understand that a product differentiation between Nseries and Eseries lines is obligatory, but this one is particularly ruining the user experience. A second option would be to use any two keys on the qwerty for zooming, but keeping them consistent across different applications. In both instances, the most important aspect would be to make the genius move of printing the zoom in and out symbols on the keys that are picked, you know, the magnifier with a + and a – inside? Maybe it would cost one or two more cents to print them on the qwerty, but how about the awesome improvement in the user experience? That’s priceless.
What do you think of this issue of consistency on S60? I have been meaning to write a full list of instances and questions that don’t make any sense, like for example why does the volume range go from 0% to a 100% in the Music Player, and from 0 to 10 in the Video player? I had a few others on my mind, but the Zoom In/Out on the E71 ticked me off right now and I had to get it written down immediately. If you have any other examples of consistency problems on S60, please tell us. We’re passionate about the oddities in our beloved platform. It’s what makes S60 what it is, an undeniabely capable and useful but seriously challenging and unwelcoming platform.
On a side note, for a full list of shortcuts for the E71, check Eric Thauvin’s list. There is a lot of less known shortcuts on it, and this is where I found out the Gallery zoom in/out keys.
