Bad Designs & Usability

2012-01-18T07:35:00.001+05:30

Samsung has become Microsoft of mobile. http://ping.fm/7PGV4

2012-01-06T13:51:00.001+05:30

Test

2012-01-06T12:56:00.001+05:30

File sharing is religion. I like this. http://ping.fm/2SPLE

2011-09-16T07:54:00.001+05:30

Good to see this. They had been thinking corporate users are not humans and don't need camera or music unroll android and apple screw them.
And yes .. they have the most expensive internet plans to rob corporate.

RIM Profit Falls 58.7%, Raising Doubts http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=516885dcf904164b372670e81d437087

2011-09-15T22:59:00.001+05:30

I like the speed with which Qualcomm is progressing .

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon roadmap, 2.5GHz CPUs coming early next year http://ping.fm/QjoAC

2011-08-26T18:09:00.001+05:30

I have never voted. Its been 20yrs. I was in different city. And we don't have easy mechanism to send votes by mail.

2011-05-05T13:57:00.001+05:30

After 7yrs. Back to Matheran

2011-05-03T00:18:00.001+05:30

Watching, The Simpson's - outsourced to 3rd world India. hilarious

2011-04-28T21:44:00.001+05:30

Great news. Google Apps get around 60 google services. I have 2 Google apps account. Yesterday i got the notice. http://bit.ly/lq1ckS

2011-04-25T11:18:00.001+05:30

Leisha with her cousin, surrounded by Onions at satara

Holi 2011

2011-04-16T18:47:00.001+05:30

Leisha playing holi

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Usability Reviews for Gadgets

Best Android Apps and Customizations

2011-03-06T14:53:00.002+05:30

I have just got rid off dirty HTC Sense UI and changed every default stock applications like launcher(homescreen), email, sms, dialer, gallery, music player, lockscreen, to custom apps. The default HTC Sense UI was not that attractive with the curved phone dock a the bottom and absolute no customization to any stock apps. I hate the tiny fonts that show up on the HD Phone and you cannot increase fonts at system level or Apps level. HTC Forget that. The default android fonts looked so small in dialer, contacts, email and everywhere. There is no option provided by HTC to increase font sizes anywhere in their apps. I had no option, but to get rid of all HTC Shit. So here are the list of apps i have brought and replaced default stock HTC apps.
After using Jailbroken iPhone where you can customize all stock apps, I found Android also offer similar function with more user control then iPhone. On Android phones you can complete change all the stock apps and have your own choice of applicaitons. I am going to highlight issues with base/stock Android apps on my HTC Desire HD and what i have replaced it with.
The customization drive for me started with the incapabilities of HTC Desire HD to change lock screen wallpaper. I had previous HTC Wildfire and it allowed to choose lock screen wallpaper. But i was shocked and disappointed to find out this HTC Desire HD dosent have this, even with its running Froyo 2.2. I searched Android Marketplace for lock screen apps and found WidgetLocker Lockscreen App.
WidgetLocker Lockscreen ($1.99)

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This app can help you customized more unlock buttons and customize wall paper. Also, it can activate on calls so that by mistake your chick dosent touch the End button. The app said, you can show if you instal ADWNotifier which intern needs ADWLauncher EX . I was introduced to whole new customization sets of app.

Before settling on this app, I had also brought Screen Suite Lockscreen & Lock 2.0 - Full but i didnt find them good.

ADWLauncher EX (€2.30).

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The application that manages your homescreen and list of all apps on your phone is called Launcher. This ADWLauncher does the same effectively. It offers you to have a iPhonesh homescreen with bottom 4 icon dock, screen transitions and animations like Nexus, etc. You can define rows and column grid for number of icons to be displayed on homescreen. You can have customized backgroun and dock layout. I am loving this and I have replaced the default HTC Sense UI.
There is another competitor Launcher app called as LauncherPro. I have not tried it. But i read its very easy and popular too.

ADWNotifier (free). Only works with ADWLauncher

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This is very good app to notifiy you with badge number like iPhone. If can alert you about number of missed calls, no of sms, no of email, etc. But it need ADWLauncher installed.

K-9 Mail (free)

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The default email client on HTC Desire HD was horrible. The super tiny fonts, not customizations and bad integrations. After trying many email clients finally i gave a try to this free client. I thought free apps are not good. But i was wrong. This is one of the best email client i have seen developed by 3rd party. I was using ProfiMail for symbian but the UI was horrible. This app is just B&W and cool. It offer customization on color, font sizes, preview lines, alerts, etc. I have yahoo, gmail and personal imap email configured.

Go SMS (free)

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This is the ultimate SMS app. The default HTC sms was horrible. This Go SMS offer lot of customization and cool themes. It can show pop up sms on arrivals. You can send batch sms, group ringtones, contact sync. You should try this.

Dial One (Free)

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Dial One is the best dialer which is fast and easy. Its very simple and customizable.It offers - Speed dial, Call log grouped by contact, Send contact, Customizable, Swipe between screens, Tone dial, Export calls, Simultaneous search on calls and contacts on two languages
I have also tried RocketDial Pro (Smart Dialer) . Its an interesting dialer with only Hand writing recognition method search. There is no keypad typing support.

Gallery Pro (¥180)

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The stock HTC Desire HD image gallery app is just a big shame on HTC. Its so horrible and just plain thumbnails. This Gallery Pro app will make you happy. I had Samsung Galaxy S and this app is pre bundled on it.

Contact Group Manager ($9.99)

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The base HTC Contacts(People) app is another horrible thing. This expensive Contact Manager is a worth try. I wish they had a dialer built in.

Other apps that I have brought and Like are -

Winamp

SystemPanel App / Task Manager

Quickoffice ConnectMobileSuite

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

HTC Desire HD and HTC Wildfire - Hands on

2011-03-03T14:43:00.001+05:30

Having fed up with unusable and non innovative Nokia N8, I decided to get rid off it and buy an Android. Nokia N8 has most outdated OS(Symbian), Nokia thought making big buttons on Symbian will make them Touch Screen OS Leader. But finally they accepted their incapabilities and collaborated with Microsoft to build Windows 7 OS phone.

While searching for an immediate replacement for Nokia N8 with minim cost, i came across HTC Wildfire. I brought that at the price of Rs13500/-.

HTC Wildfire

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Pros -

Affordable Android phone with 5mp Camera and Flash.
Good speakers quality.
Option to set picture as 'Lock Screen Wallpaper' or Home Screen Wallpaper (missing in Desire HD).
Track ball for precise cursor movement and text selection.
Light weight and good battery.
600 Mhz process was enough.

Cons -

Very low screen resolution resulting of text pixelation. 240 x 320 pixels, 3.2 inches.
Many times in the chat applications the send buttons were hidden behind the keypad due to small screens
The video recording is very bad and tiny size. CIF@15fps video recording (352 x 288 pixels) . This is below average standards of any regular phone.

HTC Sense UI

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Lot has been talked about the Sense UI. These are Android modifications done by handset manufacturers to maintain their uniqueness. The things that are currently lacking in android are the integrations of social feeds with contacts. Also any contextual information of email, sms, call log is not shown against the stock contact apps. The HTC Sense UI makes this possible with its Friends Feed widget, home screen navigations and skins. There are couple of HTC widgets like clock and weather.

Well, there is a HTCsense.com account you can create and they say you can sync contacts and photos etc. You can even track your phone from their site. I tried with no luck. Their site is quite buggy and after writing to their support they accepted that htcsense.com is not working. What a shame on HTC.

HTC Desire HD

Finally i sold HTC Wildfire and brought HTC Desire HD at a price of Rs27,000/- .

See the full gallery on Posterous

Pros-

Very large screen of 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches
Internal memory of 1.5 GB; 768 MB RAM is good for multitasking
microSD, up to 32GB, 8GB included
1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon
8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash, Video recording at 720p
The apps were very responsive. The email scrolling was smooth. I had Samsung Galaxy S. IT was a pice of shit with all bugs and it use to hang. But HTC was very good.

Cons -

Pathetic speaker quality and volume. I mean, you cannot hear any ringtone or any music. The sound of speaker is like cheap 3rd rate company product. I was shocked to see this. I had to set a polyphonic old tring-tring ringtone.
The screen is not quite visible in daylight.
Being large screen, the battery drains in a day. May be 10hrs max.
Because of high resolution screen, the system fonts look tiny and unreadable. The default apps like email, sms, dialer have no option to increase fonts. This is a biggest disadvantage which made me to install 3rd party apps for every stock client. I am writing a separate post on Android Apps.

Having limitations with HTC Sense UI, I have totally changed all stock apps to new Android Market apps. Now on my HTC Desire HD, there is nothing about HTC Sense UI left. Read my next post.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

Nokia - Far behind in Innovation. N8, Ovi and Symbian3: hands-on !

2010-12-16T14:18:00.001+05:30

The situation -

Most of the time we see Nokia prototypes for James Bond movies then something real in the market. Nokia, at least in India, is very popular in marketing and branding through design presentations, Research presentations at all conferences and developer meets. But in reality, Nokia has lost ground in mobile innovations to Apple and Google Android because of their laid back approach to touch screen phones. They never imagined touch screen phones to be so popular. Do you know, hardly anyone buys Nokia phones in Japan and Korea, as they dont have interesting design and latest technology. Nokia phones sell only in Europe, Afghanistan (haa..), India (1.2bn population) and China (1.4bn population). Yes, that covers more then 50% of world population. Hence Nokia is No.1 company. Nokia is not famous for innovations. Nokia only makes good entry level phones for taxi drivers. Nokia still dont have a proper Touch Screen OS like iPhone or Android. They have abandoned Symbian and made it open source. They tried LiMo and then switched to MeeGo with Intel. I have tried MeeGo on my Netbook and found it very unusable and lacking basic features. I switched back to JoliCloud and Ubunto. I think Nokia is not clear about their future strategy. Technologically Nokia was even the last to introduce Capacitive screens. Nokia dont have gestural interfaces standards like iPhone/Apple. Nokia only relied on their old 'Options" menu buttons design and put the whole world of actions under that button. The same design is carried forward to symbian OS for touch screens. Well, we all know that Symbian is old and outdated. Its on the verge of dying. But nokia is keeping it alive on vitamins. I saw a presentation where someone from Nokia showed how Nokia has maximum number of Research Centres in every country then any other company. Nokia spend the highest in Research and the Researchers have created piles of documents only. The hugh research has not lead Nokia to the innovation path. Nokia has no Gestural interfaces or multitouch interactions like iphone in the market, though they claim they have many patents. They came very late in touchsceens and some of the Nokia UI looks like iphone copy, Eg- pinch to zoom, elastic scroll,

Even after not being an innovative company people love Nokia for good battery life, sturdy design, same UI for every phone (less learning if you switch to another Nokia), good signal reception quality, simple usability(not innovative), robost hardware designs. Even after knowing all these issues, I feel Nokia has maintained its trusted brand quality in India.

Hands-on Experience Nokia N8

After using iPhone 3GS for a year, I had brought Samsung Galaxy S. But looking at horrible lag in Android Galaxy phone where even the "Call Accept" button was not showing up, I switched to my old favorite Nokia / Symbian phones. This time I brought Nokia N8 which is a 12Mp camera phone with Xenon flash & HDMI out. It has 3.5 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen, 16M colors and ARM 11 680 MHz processor, 3D Graphics HW accelerator. Wow impressive specs. The performance was better then Samsung Galaxy.

Nokia N8 Design problems

Wrong Screen aspect Ratio

Biggest disappointment is its screen ratio. Though the screen is 3.5 inch, the width is very small. (360 pix). This makes the phone not usable for reading any documents or emails. Everything gets truncated.
Second disappointment is the lack of QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode. At least Nokia designers should understand and copy from Apple, that people dont like rotating their phones for Typing every time. iPhone with same 3.5 inch screen provides more width to screen and good keyboard in portrait mode. Also emails and docs are more readable in iPhone then N8. Shame on Nokia !

Text input / Keypad is horribly DUMB and a Shame for Nokia.

The keypad and keyboard designed for N8 is a big dumb job with no smartness build. Here also, Nokia designers have not learned from Apple. The implemented keypad is a replica of hardware keypad. Such a Shame for Nokia.
The keyboard should be smart enough to understand which keys to show depending on the input filed. Eg. if user is typing email, then the [@] key should be directly visible in first layout. If the user is in the browser bar, then the [.com] key should be directly visible. All these innovations happen in Apple iPhone. The Auto capitalization of words while tying in a name field is missing. There is no auto correction in Nokia like iPhone.
There is absolutely no thinking gone into designing the keypad. The space bar is not centered, the number are not different color, after typing a special character, the keypad should return to text ABC mode. Nothing is done.
Every text entry is a new screen navigating away from the context. Its another shameful designer job. There is only the OK button after typing text. Eg. if you tried to edit the existing text and made a mistake, there is no way to comeback to original screen without comitting your mistake.

See the full gallery on posterous

Browser

There is no improvements in the age old nokia web browser. They did tried some improvements in the keypad based phones with browser map. But we dont see any new things or easyness in N8 browser. Texting and navigation is a pain.

12MP camera is mediocre. Full of red noise

I think with a tiny CMOS sensor Nokia as extrapolate the megapixel to 12. This camera is actually just 5mp worth.
If you take pictures indoors or in a shadow outdoors, the pictures are full of red noise. I found my previous Samsung Galaxy S camera way better and sharp then Nokia.
Of Course, Samsung do make DSLR camera(i own NX10), But Nokia is not in the business of digital camera. So it has to borrow lenses and camera from others.

Attaching a 100% crop of a 9MP camera shot by N8, I took at my apartment.

Disappointed

Backward in Multi toch and gesture interactions on screen.
Nokia Wifi Bug is famous " Invalid Server Name". And you cannot connect to wifi networks intermittently .
No Camera lens cover
No use of volume up and down buttons other just music player and camera.
Battery life was just 6 hrs initially when i brought. But now it gives me 18hrs.
No widget to disconnect wifi, gps, bluetooth, edge, call. You need to dig inside many folders and find how to do this.

Appereciating facts -

12 Mp camera and my favorite XENON Flash with 720p@25fps HD video.
Sexy design and wonderful colors. I have orange. Light and sleek. Seperate Camera button
N8 with 680MHz processor is very responsive compared to Samsung Galaxy using 1GHz processor.
Nokia Maps - this is freely available for entire India. Its very good voice guided navigation.
Ovi music - there is an offer of unlimited music download from Ovi.com store. I download some 5 Gb of Indian and international albums.

Ovi Store by Nokia and only for Nokia.

What is Ovi

Well, after looking at the success of iPhone store Nokia immediately started hosting symbian apps on ovi.com . It offered similar features like Apple ecosystem. It provided email, apps, music, photos, and file sync(now discontinued). Previously, Nokia never thought of creating a seamless ecosystem to sell developer apps or to allow Developers to sell their apps. The old way was to download some .sis file and then transfer to your phone, then install with all errors. This shows how Nokia was ignorant of creating a good ecosystem, untill Apple did it the RIGHT WAY.

Ovi store problems-

Its only for Nokia phones. So the apps are limited.
Most of the time, the Ovi store cannot connect, then if you tried to download any app, it fails, then give errors. The quality of Ovi store is very low. More then half of the apps have technical problems.
Since Nokia phones come in all sizes and keypad/touch, neither of any ovi app is best suited for any Nokia phone. IPhone is the only phone from Apple, with fixed screen size and only touch screen. So all 100,000 apps store apps are perfect and designed for single phone. Where as Nokia ovi store apps are a big mess.
Ovi store shows around only 2300 apps if i do a blank search . Where as Apps store has more then 100,000.
Most of the Ovi store apps are very badly designed and horrible User Experience. There are no Nokia apps standards like Apple human interface standards for iphone. Ovi apps looks carppie. with tiny text and buttons spread across the interface. Ovi apps dont know if they are used for keypad or touchscreen.
Another big problem in Ovi store is, out of many be 2300 apps only 30% apps are for your nokia handset model. As other ovi apps are not compatible .
Ovi Apps are most expensive then iphone or android apps. They are something in the range of Euro 10 to 25 . That is damn expensive to $0.99 iPhone apps.

The Symbian OS

The symbian OS is a age old OS which was designed for keypad entry and not touch screens. Since Nokia has no other OS, it has kept this Symbian OS alive on steroids till its 3rd Edition. There were rumors of 4th an 5th Editions. But no trace in real market. Its been 4 years that iPhone has revolutionalized the smartphone market, and Nokia is still thinking on what to do. They have made the symbian OS opensource and tied with Intel on MeeGo.

Nokia has no OS designed perfectly for gestural touch screen interfaces supporting multi touch.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

Galaxy S Android and iOS iPhone 3GS - Hands On experience

2010-11-12T10:35:00.001+05:30

I have been using iPhone 3GS on 3G at Seoul, korea for almost a year. Back to Pune, India I decided to buy the famous Andorid 2.1 Eclair , Galaxy S (I9000) Samsung phone. I was delighted to have a large 4” Super AMOLED screen and 1GHz snapdragon processor. But as I started to use, it fell short of my expectations compared to my previous iPhone 3GS. Well, here are few good things and bad things about Galaxy S in short

What i Liked about Galaxy S -

Large AMOLED screen.
Same look and feel like iphone. So no learning.
Samsung has very well integrated SNS (Social Network Service - Facebook, Twitter, Gmail).
The Contacts book can show latest SNS updates for each contact. You can comment and post from there
The Dialer has T9 search that directly match contacts in adress book as you type numbers. Unfortunately it only matches the First Name field.
The best is wifi Hotspot. The mobile acts as the wifi hotspot and my wife can use my internet plan to browse internet on her phone (iPhone), even when i am on Edge service. Horribly in India 3G service is not with every operator. Big scams have hit.
Good 5MP camera but without Flash. HD video recording.

What i hate about Galaxy S and Android -

The most important thing is SPEED. Even after a 1GHz processor the phone behaves like a old 200Hhz Nokia phone. Having used Nokia N97, I think Symbian system is far better in performance then Anroid.
The Phone hangs constantly and there is a known Lag problem for Android and Galaxy S. Things just dont show up. Funny is when someone calls, the phone rings and i dont see the screen activated with Accept button. Its black for few seconds. Very shameful.
I just miss the iPhone Gestures for keypad to place curser and select text. Android has a horrible mechanism to select text. You have to change the mode of keypad to 4way Arrow buttons. Then use thse arrow buttons to move the cursor. Very shameful and unusable.
They keyboard is very slugish and Predictive text is a big nonsense. It types all the wrong words. iPhone spell check and auto correction is far better then foolish word prediction android.
Galaxy S has a hardware problem with Proximity sensor. Most of the time when you hold the phone to your ears the screen dosent go off and your chic hits the Big Cancel button.
The auto rotation of screen is also buggy. Even if you change the phone orientation, the screen hangs in the pervious orientation. You need to shake the phone hard to unlock the buggy roation Gyroscope.
Samsung Galaxy S which use Kie as desktop software to sync data has bugs. My Galaxy is not recognized by Kie. This problem is written everwhere on internet and Samsung has done nothing.
Samsung has perfectly copied the iPhone as a typical Korean company always does. The Galazy S shape is having similar corner radius like iphone. Even the home button is similar to iphone, only its square instead of circular. The number of hardware button location is also copied from iPhone. The look and feel of for icons docs and homescreen is exactly like iPhone.
Samsung is not a Responsible and dedicated company like Apple. They are not worried for Galaxy S bugs as they have many other mobiles to sell. Samsung phones come with bugs and they never correct it. They just discontinue the phone and release new model. Samsung makes around Apple only has one phone. Apple is CUSTOMER caring company. They will release patch immediately to eveyone if there is aproblem.

Generic Anroid Problems -

As compared to Apple iOS operating system for iPhone, the Android OS is horrible. Even Symbian is far better then Anroid. Only that Symbian is not designed for touch interfaces. The Android OS is not smooth like iphone. The scrolling or paging is jurkey and hangs. I have hardly seen any application crash in iPhone. But Android and Galaxy S are full with application crashes, not respongind, exception errors, and what not..
The Emailing application takes lot of time to load emails. It dosent scroll properly. You cannot edit the quoted email text.
There is no Copy and Paste from email to other apps or from Internet pages to other apps. This was one of the best features in iOS.
Not the worst part. Just compare Android and iPhone app from the same company. Example the most popular- Facebook. Facebook app for iPhone will be beautiful, but for Android it will be half backed. eg. when you click any comments it wil leave the native app and go to browser. Half done work. Not only this app, take Skype. Skype dosent work in many android phones. I have notices that the same company makes a perfectly designed App for iPhone but when it comes for Android, they just throw some code to say that they also have android app. Why is this ? Is it because they follow Apple Human Interface Guidelines properly and for Android they dare to make all mistakes ?

Advantages of Android over iOS (iPhone)

The best part of Android, i think is, they have allowed more freedom to apps developers to access native OS features and apps. Eg. You can attach a file from your SD card. Or write to the calendar and photos. For iPhone, the native apps cannot be touched or modified by 3rd party apps. The apps developers have to import data and make another copy in their apps database.
Android can be customized by handset manufacturers to make their unique homescreens and dialers and SNS integrations. But i heard this is going to stop.
Well, you can replace battery and add external memory card.
Have better camera and FM radio. iPhone dosent have Radio.

What i miss in Android -

There is no good music player like iTunes. There is no desktop iTunes like app to sync music and take backup of data
Upgrading of Android OS is hell and country dependent. iPhone OS is updated globally at the same time. I am Still waiting for Android 2.2 Fryo update to my Galaxy S for India
Wort part is, the Samsung Kie desktop sync app for Galaxy S is only for PC and Windows. I have Mac and i have no option to update my Galaxy S. I think Google is paying every handset company to not to have a Mac OS desktop app.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

Handset Manufacturer's role in future Mobile UX

2010-09-01T17:49:00.001+05:30

Mobile Trends

For last 5ys or so, we have seen a gradual transition of mobile popularity from a simple feature phone to a feature rich smart phone. I think, this transitions is also fueled by growth of social networking websites, collaborative gamings, music downloads, 3G/4G, LTE services, easy GPS access, etc. Whenever i see any mobile Advertisement, they show facebook and messenger chats on the mobile homescreens. The importance of handset hardware and form-factor is diminishing. Its shown as mear rectangular block with a large screen. The software & content delivery is overtaking it. The TV and newspaper Ads dont show the mobile form factor, but the Apps Icons on the homescreen. The whole focus has shifted.

Mobile OS companies and their strategies

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Because of good ecosystem trend set by Apple(iPhone) and Google Android, any developer in the world can realize his idea into a Mobile App and sell it too. The design and beauty of a mobile is now not limited to the small in-house UI team who usually dont have time. The earlier smart OS was only dominated by Microsoft who made windows mobile OS by just copying the PC ui without thinking mobile user needs. They did provided a dirty appendix called "Stylus" to solved their own "non-Touchable Tiny-Icon" problems. And users were left with carrying another gadget(Stylus) like PC mouse. Microsoft also made a half cooked OS and left to handset manufacturers to clean the design and make it usable. This also provided UI teams in handset companies like (LG, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, etc) a chance to provide a differentiating unique UI for their brand even if all were using same windows OS. But actual Users had to suffer for OS updates as they had to depend on the handset manufacturer rather then Microsoft. This was because, the handset company had screwed the OS with their customization and direct update is not possible now. This case is true for Android too as you cannot easily upgrade the OS. Well, Google at least releases new updates frequently as against Microsoft doing one update after 2-3yrs. Apple is the only company where any user can update OS immediately after Apple releases new OS, no matter which part of world he is and which carrier he is on. This strategy is now being copied by Google and Microsoft. Going forward, Google and Microsoft will not allow for UI customization by handset comapny, which is very good, provided Google and Microsoft do not make half baked UIs.

Another famous smart phone is Symbian OS based phones by Nokia. This OS was only used by Nokia untill this year. I personally like Symbian more then windows. It was easy and not the PC way atleast. But I wonder why Nokia didnt made any Apps store, and made it horribly difficult for developer to develop apps and impossible for users to download it. They never did it untill now, may be 2009, as they see a threat from Apple. To get a symbian app you have to go to some 3rd party website, download it, then transfer that .sis file to your phone, then certify it and install it. Well, Symbian was not allowed for any other company other then Nokia. But Windows mobile was licensed to other hardware manufacturers. Nokia has now abandoned this Symbian OS as it was originally designed for buttons based ui. Now its the time of Gestures and touch screens and symbian is an outdated OS. So you have to rewrite it from scratch. I think they are looking at LiMo OS or MeGo. Similarly, Microsoft Windows mobile OS was neither for good for touch screen, nor for hardware buttons UI. Till date, iPhone and Android are the only full touch screen and gesture based UIs.

Its just shame that Microsoft and Nokia never cared for end to end experience. Nokia has recently in 2009 put the ovi.com store to make the apps for Symbian OS. Microsoft is still dreaming of the Window 7 OS to be launched late 2010.

The Big Question for Mobile UI Designers in Handset companies ?

OK, the smart phone is all about creating a scalable and easy OS. This OS is supposed to be invisible and the Apps more visible.

If smartphones OS are going to get cheap and developers around the world are going to build apps on the smart OS, thus making the phone(eg.iphone) better and better everyday, then what are UX designers in handset companies going to do ? Is there any role left for UX designers of handset companies in defining future mobile UI. ? Because 90% of UI is done by Apps developers and their designers.

Handset company will only provide industrial design, large good capacitive screen, Good camera and all kinds of sensors. Then its upto Apps developers and their designer to build that phone and give it a shape.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

2010-08-20T08:42:00.001+05:30

Attesting notary stamp too expensive in korea. $40 per page

2010-08-13T16:11:00.001+05:30

I dont understand why all scif-fi movies like Inception, Predator, Species, are all in dark. First people dont understand the plot, then they get confused in dark. Please provide some torches to these directors.

Jailbreak themes - Vista on iPhone

2010-08-12T06:34:00.001+05:30

Here are few beautiful themes i tried. Some of them are paid and some free, either from Cydia or Rock App. After downloading them, you have to visit 'Winterboard' app and move these themes up the stack to they get render. Also you can enable and disable some features. Its wonderful. I loved the windows Vista theme on Apple iPhone. Haaaa

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

2010-08-11T18:20:00.001+05:30

007 Bond old movies - always a plot to create a new world in space(moonraker) or under the sea (spy who loved me). Humans need new life.

2010-08-10T17:35:00.001+05:30

Watching old James Bond movies. Its all about KGB and most of the plots in Afghan, Gulf, turkey. The power ratio has changed so much now.

Jailbreak iPhone to Enhance Experience & Efficiency - easy steps and apps

2010-08-10T11:31:00.001+05:30

Like many iPhone users I was very curious about this whole Jailbreaking stuff. I did tried to google it when I first brought iPhone. But after reading all the techie stuff, i gave up untill I read about www.jailbreakme.com . Going to the website Jailbreakme.com from any iPhone offers possibly the easiest jailbreak method in iPhone history. Using a PDF security flaw the website uses a corrupt font that makes running code possible.

And so I just pointed my Safari browser to jailbreakme.com and within half a minute, I got the Cydia store icon on my phone.

So why would you want to Jailbreak anyway ? some of my thoughts?

You are a freak and tech savvy that you want to keep experimenting
You are bored with the same old iPhone UI, lack of functionality and want something new.
You want to transfer files & photos over Bluetooth to PC and other phones
You want a view all files and email them as attachments.
You want a good tools for multitasking, email notifications, alerts, T9 supported dialer etc..
You want to tether your iphone to use internet on laptop
use skype and other messengers to make VOIP over 3G.
Add new UI themes and icons to iphone.
and do many things you always wished.... :)

And what is really a Jailbreaking ?

Its a process that allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to run third-party unsigned code on their devices by unlocking the operating system and allowing the user root access. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many extensions and themes previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia & RockApp

Jailbreaking Myths and Risks - many stories

Jailbreaking is not unlocking! It is risk free and totally legal (as many claim). Everything that works before jailbreaking continues to work after. Jailbreaking only adds features. You can simply restore in iTunes at anytime to get back to a factory state.

Why Apple is against Jailbreaking ?

Of course Apple wants to keep control of the iPhone platform. Apple has made Apps store rules for their benefits. Some of these rules include: patching system files such as SpringBoard, allowing apps to run in the background, running apps out of the “sandbox”, and simply doing things Apple decided that they don’t want you to do often for reasons to their benefit, not yours (such as tethering).

When iPhone was launched, it had 1-2yr old features that rest of competition already had. May be they want to create customer curiosity for next release and not provide everything at once.

How to Jailbreak ?

Just point your iphone safari browser to www.jailbreakme.com Dont know when this hack will be fixed by Apple. So hurry.!!!

The process ?

Once you point your browser to jailbreakme.com and swipe your finger on the lock button, the iphone will rebooth and add a Cydia store icon on homescreen. thats it. Done.
Now use this Cydia store to find another Apps store RockApp. Now you have three app stores. The original iphone apps, Cydia and RockApp
You can now search the apps you want and download them. I have found the paid apps in cydia and rockapp are costly then the iphone apps store. Generally the jailbreak apps are in the range of $10 to $20. There are few at $3 to $5. But hardly any at $0.99
The skeleton basic :
- Springboard is the name given by Apple to the home screen
- Summerboard is the name of a Jailbroken app that lets you customize the Springboard
- Winterboard is the new 2.X Jailbroken app that basically succeeded summerboard in its functions

Many of the functionality that Jailbreaking apps provided earlier to iOS4, are now directly available from iOS. These are background apps (backgrounder App) , Folders, etc. So be careful before downloading apps.

Jailbreak Apps that I have on my iphone with actual screenshots

This is the G.O.C. Theme Pro by ToyVan $1.99

See and download the full gallery on posterous

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/g.o.c.-pro.html

This theme makes transparent circular icons and adds a 5 icon deck. It has custom sounds and wall paper. You need to also install 5 icon app to get them on the deck.

The Cydia Store - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is probably one developer Jay Freeman show. The store is self sufficient to buy, download apps, update existing apps and remove apps. It also shows the space available.

RockApp Store - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is another store to download apps.

SB Settings - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This provides a one click access to any running tasks and you can switch it on/off
http://cydia.saurik.com/package/sbsettings

The Activator App - free

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is accessed from Settings > Activator. It provides all your dream touch interactions. You can assign any gestures to any action now. I wish Apple provided this in their core OS

The WinderBoard - free
http://cydia.saurik.com/package/winterboard

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This is the place where all UI stuff happens. The order of rendering the apps are decided here. It controls the homescreen layout.

Notified

This app pulls all your notifications together. I would call it unified messaging.

IntelliScreen - $9.99
http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/intelliscreen.html

This is my favorite. It shows all notifications on your homescreen like emails, calendar, weather, news, etc.

iBluenova
http://www.medevil.net/

my another favorite. Now you can send files over bluetooth using this app. I dont know why Apple is so cruel to prevent people sharing photos and files from iphone to other devices.

Elert $1.99

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/elert.html

Shows a quick summary of new email no matter what App you're using on your phone. This is really helpful.

My3G

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/my3g.html

this app fools the other apps that your iphone is on wifi and you can use other apps on 3G. Like make a VOIP call from skype.

Posted via email from Sameer's Design Blog

2010-08-10T05:32:00.001+05:30

When Apple releases new iPhone OS , anyone can update using iTunes. But if Google updates Android, Handset company decides the faith of users. Its the same old story of Microsoft windows mobile update available only to few. So stick to iPhone !
But its good that MSFT learnt the lesson and will not allow manufacturers to customize UI. I hope Google also follows. This will eventually lead to handset companies to compete only on hardware specs.

2010-08-09T05:15:00.001+05:30

facebook I am still confused as to how to post to wall stream Vs status update. What is the difference

2010-08-08T16:47:00.001+05:30

There is not a single good photo organiser with photo edit capability. The picasa don't have local photo edits and lightroom is complex.

2010-08-07T21:32:00.001+05:30

when are the stupid laptops going to put GPS in them. Do they need to wait for Apple to try first and then copy.

UI Wireframing websites / tools

2010-07-28T07:04:00.001+05:30

I wanted an online tool to create simple and fast wireframe for iphone, ipad and web applications. I evaluated couple of online websites for this before subscribing a paid membership for one of them(mockflow). I know there are may desktop based wireframe tools. Most popular being MS Power Point, Word, Excel & visio for Windows and for Mac OS its keynote & Omnigraffle. There are also other regular hi-fidelity tools like Photoshop, Illustrator & Flash.

One funny thing i have noticed that some good wireframe sites (pidoco.com, hotgloo,) are extremely expensive and not meant for individuals. They cost something like $50/month to $600/month. They only intend to sell this to corporate and not to individuals.

Here are few that i tried personally.

1. MockFlow ($60/year) - Flash based. Has desktop flash tool that sync to web tool.

This is the one I have finally subscribed. Its excellent tool with predefined templates, a free template store, share your templates, etc. It has simple drag and drop shapes and icons to your design, export as png, pdf, ppt and view site map. Best part is collaboration with comments, whiteboard, version control, etc. You can even have a co-editor.

Cons - sometime its slow and the sync dosent happen. There are still many shapes needed. eg. there is no arrow. The zoom is just upto 100%, you cannot do detail works. The UI is little clumpy. There is no toolbar to directly click on action buttons. You have to go the menu click way.

Few features are -

Simple usability focused to make wireframing easier
Real-Time Design Collaboration with Team Chat
Track project activities and get updates from your team members
Pages can be applied with multiple (recursive) templates saving time
Invite co-editors and reviewers for your Wireframe project
Export your Mockup to image / PDF document / PowerPoint presentation
Layout Builder for designing background layout designs
WhiteBoard tool for drawing doodles on mockup
Built-in Web Snap function for capturing webpages
Unique Expose snapshot feature
Compare pages function for A/B design testing
Create, Visualize and export your Wireframe's SiteMap
Get annotated feedback directly in the mockup
Support for Revisions (real-time)
Import additional Component libraries or create your own
Never lose your work with the smart auto-recovery function
Overlaid Graph and 960 grids are provided for layout
You can apply your preferred Wireframe Font with one-click
Self-serve License Manager - upgrade/downgrade team members in a click

2. Mockingbird (currently free) - no Flash., no desktop tool. Powered by Cappuccino

Its designed& developed by just two Indians working in US. Currently its free but they will start paid subscription. Its more easy and clean then mockflow.com . But its still in basic stage. No collaboration, no image uploads, no chat or comments, very limited shape library. Very slow development and updates. (I guess they are not fulltime company. Its parttime wrok). But its worth what they have done and competiting with big guys. Oh. there is no flash. Its a different framewrok like HTML5. It called as Cappuccino. Just google and check this. You can have multiple pages, add links, drag buttons and share just as link.

Cons - no collaboration team. very basic shapes, lot of limitations when designing. few export options. No options to make notes on the design. As i said, the feature addition is extremely slow.

3. iPlotz ($100 to $500/year) - Flash. Has desktop version too

This was was my favorite. But to buy its little expensive. It has all the worlds features - many shapes, direct access tool bar, export to many formats, Project management, collaboration and chats, version control, different UI styles (mac, windows, mobile). Many templates and online snippet store.

4. Gliffy ($5 to $800/month). Little expensive.

I liked this even. It has custom shape tool. You can draw any shape but it does not have multiple pages or projects. Its only one page. Its good for charts and diagrams. I hope they extend this for real wireframe with multiple pages per project.

Posted via email from Sameer's Scribblings

2010-07-22T05:07:00.001+05:30

work - I heard about divorce on Facebook. How about company resignations ? FB

2010-07-15T15:25:00.001+05:30

Carrying a Costco pizza in the bus makes everyone hungry somebody give me a seat and I will share

2010-07-08T13:39:00.001+05:30

I like this idea. But the Geo tweets were already there, which is a kind of notes.
http://ping.fm/RX4BR

Rise of Smart phones & Fall of Feature phones. The trend of designing mobile UI for specific user group is slowly diminishing.

2010-07-01T10:08:00.001+05:30

With the news of withdrawal of Microsoft kin mobiles(Project Pink), for whatever rumored reasons, I am wondering if there was really a need for different UI for different user segments. As Kin phones were targeted for Teens with low cost and cloud storage and sync, the same can be achieved with just a change of skins to OS based phones. The OS based phones already offer social applications, cloud syncing, multimedia and games. Here i am talking about phones like iPhone & Android. Windows 7 is still not out in the market.

Traditionally all the hardware companies made many mobile phones , each targeted for 'so-called' different user groups - college going, business users, multimedia users, gaming users, etc. And accordingly the price and features are added or removed from each phone to create thousands of models. Non of these phones are perfect for anyone. Forget the UI design. Do you really need so many variety of phones from same company ? or only one phone for all, like iPhone from Apple. Yes, Apple only has one phone.

I use iPhone for emails, photos, cloud syncing, etc. all the day. When i go home, my 3yr daughter uses my iPhone very easily to navigate to games and play games. She even tries to download new games from apps store icon. One day I was very surprised to receive iTunes receipt for new game downloaded(by my daughter). My wife uses my phone for checking her social networking and messengers. So one single phone is satisfying needs for different users.

I feel that, as the cost of mobile OS goes down along with the cost of hardware(memory, processor), everyone would love to have a OS based phones then these proprietary feature phones made by hardware companies. The advantage of OS phones is that you can add new applications, update the OS with new features and really customize it. Feature phones dont offer any of this. You have to just throw the phone if it becomes outdated.

If you realize now, the word PDA has lost its value. Few years back Microsoft popularized the term PDA with windows CE phones. They differentiated themself with phones having capability to add memory, document editing and emailing. I wonder why these phones were kept purposely low multimedia standard. They would always have a bad camera and no music player or FM. Blackberry phones followed the same strategy . The reasoning was, business users are machines and they dont have human feeling to take pictures and listen to music. What a shit!. Why would you prevent anyone from doing so. Ya, just to make another category of mobile phones. Sales strategy !. Thanks to new term, Smart Phones, you now have every feature of business phones along with all multimedia. The line between business phone and multimedia phone has vanished. These new category of Smart phones satisfy every category of users. They are OS based.

Another term that become popular is Apps Store. Ya, with iPhone having more then 100,000 apps in its Apps Store and that too mostly at $0.99, it has really become affordable for everyone. Moreover Apple made it very easy to add applications, whereas Microsoft and Nokia had terrible application download process. Think of any idea on mobile and you will find an application in app store. The Apps store provides something for every user category. Now, where is the question of designing the whole phone for only one user group. If the OS offers flexibility to customize the layout, style and information on screen, there is no need to design for just specific category of users. Instead, have a generic OS and allow for applications designed for specific user groups. This enables you to have only one phone and one OS satisfying every user. Slowly the control of mobile UI design is getting transfered from handset manufacturer to Apps developer company.

With the advent of multi touch screens the phone form factor has also reduced to a mear rectangular block with glass. The industrial design for handset company is minimalistic approach. Similar to OS apps , you can have different mobile covers to customize your mobile look & personality. Some covers look business class(leathers) and other look funny for teens (yellow covers). The product industrial design is also commoditized. Users can change the design as they want.

Posted via email from Sameer's Scribblings

Had a great LG dinner

2010-06-30T17:34:00.001+05:30

This duck was delicious.

Sameer
Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Sameer's Scribblings

Designers as Entrepreneurs

2010-06-30T08:27:00.001+05:30

Whenever I look at a great software product or a product company, I see that they were started by someone with strong engineering background. I can hardly recall if there are any product companies stated by designers. By saying designers, I mean UX designers (Lets keep Industrial designer out for time being). Ya, designers do have stared some UX service companies. What after that ?

Whenever you have a great idea, designers are constrained by their lack of software programming knowledge. They have to depend on software engineers. They cannot own the product code or check-in their idea to apps stores. Whereas software programmers can easily hire designers and still fully control the code ownership. Is it that in a software product, UX is not a core requirement ? UX can be done by anyone with good commonsense and little readings.

Or is it that the entrepreneurial nature of UX designer is less then a engineer ? Do designers like the cozy jobs and live in their fancy world of creativity & criticism ? Are they afraid to take business challenges which programmers can take? Are designers soft hearted and shy ? I know UX designers cannot be that shy, they do have to sell their ideas like a sales persons. As a designer you have to always convince your theory, either by backing it by design standards or usability test results. Engineering dont have to convince you their coding algorithm, even if they, you will not understand, But thats it. UX designer's world is limited to their 1st level of colleagues (PMs, Developers, Business heads). They dont like to interact with Sales, Finance(business value), marketing, technology. They are happy to do this job and for years. They like to attend conference and publish papers. Done !. So where is the need of entrepreneurship ?

But why dont i see startups or great product companies started by designers. Would things have been different ?

Posted via email from Sameer's Scrbblings

2010-06-24T20:21:00.001+05:30

Skype was suppose to be running in background in iPhone iOS4 , but yet there is no update from skype. Whereas small apps already have.

2010-06-24T05:28:00.001+05:30

Good to see new apps update available for ios4 multitasking.

2010-06-17T16:41:00.001+05:30

Watching FIFA Worldcup , Korea Vs Argentina..

2010-05-27T14:53:00.001+05:30

Exhausted playing basket ball , after 15yrs.

2010-05-19T09:29:00.001+05:30

Korean lunch with the team.

2010-05-19T05:02:00.001+05:30

acamedic conf is more about Eng grammer, no of refs, empirical methods than real value & current relevance. It's just prof & students show

2010-05-18T07:31:00.001+05:30

Beautiful rains. Reminds me Lonavala, Mumbai.

2010-05-18T05:14:00.001+05:30

Heavy rains.

2010-05-12T16:13:00.001+05:30

All korean websites only work in IE. Its very frustrating that bank, hospital, corporate, ecommerce sites dependent on Microsoft.
MacBook cannot be used for internet.

2010-05-11T17:32:00.001+05:30

It's really disappointing that most of restaurents close by 9pm here. No food

2010-05-09T14:17:00.001+05:30

taking Mac OS lessons and on transition from shitty windows OS

2010-05-07T06:54:00.001+05:30

2010-05-07T06:44:00.001+05:30

At the healthcare technology conference. Amazing things possible by sensors, mobile, network

2010-05-05T09:11:00.001+05:30

At korea folk village. On childrens day it's totally packed.

2010-05-03T13:38:00.001+05:30

There is one big noise pollution at my home. Every neighbors have Piano and they play too loud.

2010-04-30T04:27:00.001+05:30

After the rains it's green and flowers is Seoul.

2010-04-28T06:23:00.001+05:30

Finally Nokia N8. Best multimedia and symbian ~3. But in the age of 1 GHz Snapdragon processors, Nokia fails with ARM 11 680 MHz.
http://ping.fm/dtv3g

2010-04-23T13:11:00.001+05:30

First time going to watch stadium game. Never seen baseball. It's our LG team playing. Oh it's raining

2010-04-23T07:05:00.001+05:30

I didn't knew McDonalds don't offer burger before 11am. They have different egg breakfasts only.

2010-04-13T05:59:00.001+05:30

Just got chance to try iPad. Received one for our R&D. Its really a big iPhone. But difficult to hold in one hand and type with other

2010-04-13T05:07:00.001+05:30

We need to wait and watch for a year. Many tablets coming out. Android, iPhone os, palm os, windows, Linux

2010-04-13T05:05:00.001+05:30

In this side of world, all news Papers talk only electronics. The last week was only ipad benchmarking.

2010-04-09T07:16:00.001+05:30

Few year back, Firefox was best browser, then came chrome. But now both are very slow, heavy and crashes. Need to go back to IE

2010-04-09T06:27:00.001+05:30

Which is fastest laptop. Is it Core i7 Windows(Asus, Dell, HP) or Core 2Duo Mac Book Pro

2010-04-09T04:36:00.001+05:30

Since last night it's all about iPhone 4.0 OS. http://bit.ly/c0WZE5

2010-04-01T13:08:00.001+05:30

Happy April Fools day.. did you fooled anyone today ?

2010-04-01T05:52:00.001+05:30

Who will win in the Smartphones business? http://ping.fm/hmiLy

2010-03-30T14:24:00.001+05:30

Did you guys know about this 'Innovation for public' http://ashoka.org/about

2010-03-30T03:43:00.001+05:30

First time in this electronic country, at my high tech appartment, there was power failure whole night

2010-03-29T12:39:00.001+05:30

I am surprised to find that there is no Soda water or Sparkling water in korea. You have to drink pure alcohol

2010-03-28T18:31:00.001+05:30

exhausted after a full day Seoul Grand park visit.

2010-03-25T10:25:00.001+05:30

The future of technology. Where is Apple http://ping.fm/2BKiS

2010-03-24T08:18:00.001+05:30

relation based image search Google. http://ping.fm/EWrHZ

2010-03-24T05:19:00.001+05:30

12 MP Symbian^3-running Nokia N8-00 caught in the wild - GSMArena.com news http://ping.fm/FbI2L

2010-03-23T13:59:00.001+05:30

I am adding one more quality to my resume -Micro Blogger, social entrepreneurial, digital content generator

2010-03-23T12:09:00.001+05:30

Ok. Here is site on why apple dosent do market research .. http://ping.fm/QRLXj

2010-03-23T12:04:00.001+05:30

I just read this " Apple employes all target users in house. So they dont need to go out for research"..Aha!

2010-03-23T04:00:00.001+05:30

Nice snow along the river near my home

2010-03-23T03:51:00.001+05:30

Nice snow along the river near my home

2010-03-22T04:01:00.001+05:30

I have been recently creating lot of Internet content. I am contributing to Digital world. Microbloging, pictures, comments, Internet apps

2010-03-20T17:42:00.001+05:30

The big $2200 core i7 , 17in laptop on it's way.

2010-03-19T15:23:00.001+05:30

Back to home In the bus. It's weekend

2010-03-18T17:50:00.001+05:30

Watching aliace in wonderland. Fantistic

2010-03-18T11:30:00.001+05:30

http://ping.fm/R6pP5

2010-03-18T11:18:00.001+05:30

Google coming with TV and tv Ads with sony. http://ping.fm/3PLun

2010-03-18T10:05:00.001+05:30

Collection of great Search Visualization http://ping.fm/aPDzS

2010-03-18T05:33:00.001+05:30

Bright sunny day after snow yesterday

2010-03-17T11:44:00.001+05:30

3D man machine interfaces. http://www.xtr3d.com/

2010-03-17T05:57:00.001+05:30

Another wow.. i was not aware Oracle finally got Sun. How big Oracle wants to be. How about Oracle Mobiles and PCs

2010-03-17T04:49:00.001+05:30

Windows7 mobile has not multi tasking ? http://ping.fm/jzSlU

2010-03-17T04:04:00.001+05:30

Internet is a medium of communication like paper. You can't tell people to not to paint nude on paper. So is Internet.

2010-03-16T18:19:00.001+05:30

Apple vs. Google gets personal:
http://ping.fm/YVncB

2010-03-16T16:49:00.001+05:30

Happy Gudi Padwa. Maharashtra new year

2010-03-16T13:11:00.001+05:30

I didnt knew yahoo has Twitter look-alike product with photo, video, text. http://ping.fm/KiLyD

2010-03-16T13:00:00.001+05:30

What do you want to be

2010-03-16T11:41:00.001+05:30

use technology to predict another technology

It's rain

2010-03-09T15:40:00.000+05:30

It's the snow and rain

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Sunae 1(il)-dong,Seongnam-si,South Korea

Nokie E71 : good basic phone. But bad business phone

2008-12-21T17:42:00.004+05:30

Comments on Nokia as basic phone
1) This phone looks sexy and cool. Its compact, good battery life, sound and voice.
2)But keyboard interferes in the navigational keys and accept/rejectkeys.
Every time you want to accept or reject a phone, the qwertykeys(P&Q) below them will get pressed.

No dedicated button for camera. A useless hardware button for voicecommand/PPT is present. I guess 1% user may be using it. Instead itcould be camera button.

If you are considering to buy this phone against a windows or blackberry phone.. please consider these...

Nokiais still living Ice ages where they think they have invented a miraclebusiness application. But Nokia email features and design are patheticascompared with windows and blackberry. I don’t understand why theyhave not yet fired their Design & Product head. They have come upwith an email client which is like a black & White TV in 2008.There are hundreds of things that goes wrong this these allNokia/Symbian emails phones. They are like a bare minimum life supportfor emails/calenders. They are not suited for business email users. Ihave been using many windows mobile(Samsung i780, HTC, O2, Sony P1i)and other blackberry. Nokia fails ins following -

1. Lousiest processor(360MHz).Other business phones have 400 to 680HHz(samsung i780, iphone,HTCTTYII, Sony Experiea). Takes too much time to open emails,download, swhitch emails, etc.

2. Hundreds of unnecessary system messagesputting phone in modal mode(cant do anything else). Eg.. every time youswitch emails account(yahoo to Gmail) .. a message comes. (a)"Do youwant to Connect?". if said yes, it shows a big progress bar and onecant do anything. In windows Mobile, such idiotic operations are donein background. One can set few mails to download and still go and readother mail. In Nokia you just cant do any thing.., (b)"anothermessage"Retriving mails", Progress bars, etc... Looks like Noida has ahugh documentation team to show mesages.

3. Nokia still believesthat the whole world is hidden in their revolutionary "Options" menu,.They think the world is still living in 1995. Most of importantinformation and all actions are hidden in this great "Options" menu.They are 10 clicks away.. eg.. attachments are all hidden, as if they are not important. Creating new mails is a 10 click process. Options>message>New>email>exchange email> ....What a pathetic design.

4. There is no way to search the emailsin the email list. WindowsMobile does this beautifully. If you justtype few words of either name of person or subject line in email listview, all matching emails are filtered in runtime.. like the contactfilter. Nokia thinks its not important and according to them mostpeople have not more then 5mails in their mail box. I have 400 emailsin 5 emails accounts. Its a hell job on nokia. But very smooth onwindows and blackberry.

5) The moment you enter an email box, by default nokia takes you to the unread mails,no matter its sitting on 51th level. But i dont want this. I want toread the latest mail. So i have to keep scrolling.. or make sure that ihave read all my past 100 mails. Or nokia will punish me everytime...

6)There is no email suggesterlike in windowsmobile. I have to click "To", then go to contacts, thenselect a name(nokia dont show email id), then after selecting, nokiawill tell there are more emails to this name, so select one.. then icome back to email.. Such a big process. Why dont they just copy otherwindows emails function like in Outlook/WindowMobile. In windows phoneif you just start typing name in To field, all matchine emails justappears below.

7) No HTML view. Nokia have decided inthis world- 2009, no one needs to see html mails. They think we areancient caveman. Because of this lack of feature, most of the emailsshow to me as blank body. I dont know why.. Nokia just cant read thosehtmls formated mails. sometime it reads but most of time they areblank. But other mobile platforms - Windows Mobile 6, Symbian UIQ 9 ,etc do show html mails beautifully.

8)If you choose imap as folders format, then you cant have option to download emails by KB size. This is weird..

9 ) i dont know why Nokia cant provide seperate sent , outbox folders fordifferent email account. I have yahoo, Gmail and hotmail. .. all thesent mails of each mail account are put in only one sent mail. Itbecome difficult to sort them by email.. And anyway there is no search emails function anywhere.

10) There are many functions lacking in the email. If you sent a mail, you cant forward the same mail. You can edit the attachments and add new.

11) the folder view is a nonsense...If you select an email account, by default it shows all folder, thenagain i have to select inbox. This i have to do every time. They cantset inbox as default and have folder to switch by options menu.Everything in nokia is many clicks away..

10) Nokia has not at all used the qwerty keyboard as shortcuts. No button is mapped. Every thing is by options menu. What a shame..

11) Most of the places,wrong actions assigned to buttons.Eg. in an calender view, if i get an calender invite, and i click thecenter button, i should show the options to accept, reject, postpone..But instead it starts calling the person. They forget that i am incalender view and the center button should be mapped to theapplications. The green call key is already there for calling. Then whydo such mistakes.

12) The auto suggest for spelling is a bigfailure for qwerty keyboard users. Such users( also me) don’t look atthe screen while pressing keys. Now with spellchecker on, it starttying wrong words. Also, if i want to just check spellings at the endof email, there is no option.

13) The contacts application is really a shame. Now, since thisE71 is an emailing phone, they should show email on mouseover thecontact. But instead, i have to open the contact and then select theemail. There is no way to customize the view of contacts. eg..name+number, name + email, single line view, two lines., show pictures,Show latest added contacts, Show most frequently used contacxts. Showcontacts by date creations, picture view. These features really help toget right contacts if you have 1000+ contact. I do have.

Looking at all this, nokia should not call them self as emailing phone. They are a toy maker in emailing business...

All these above basic features are ther ein windows mobile phone.

More nokia failures later ...

Sameer.

File browse dialogue- MSFT

2007-01-11T15:32:00.000+05:30

This is a insert picture dialogue for Microsoft Word. I think i double clicked on the header to expand it maximise to search an image and then added it to world doc. But after sometime i again clicked the insert image icon and then... it put a full screen dialogue for selecting image. I was searching for a minimise button on top and re size handle on bottom. I couldn't see. And i didn't remember how i had made it maximise. Then i remembered that i need to double click on the title bar to reduce. But my god.. what a trap i was in..
If they are allowing the dialogue to be maximise, should we not have the minimise title bar button ?

Easy7 conference at Bangalore

2007-01-11T15:13:00.000+05:30

Attended the Easy7 conference at Bangalore on 5th Jan. This time I saw a small crowd compared to last time. May be they didn't had enough seats. Well, it looks Chi-si.org has now changed its model of conference. I would now rather call it a workshop then conference. They didn't invited any papers. Last year I presented there on "standards based UI Design".
This year it was only invited speakers. They were Jeremy Ashley (Oracle), Bill Scott (Yahoo), Surya Vanka (Microsoft), Sarah Bloomer.
I have been attending the Easy conference for past 3yrs and each year i could see new faces. India is really growing in HCI.
There was going to be an evening meet called by folks from design-for-use. I missed it as i had to catch up with a meeting.

Usability of Shampoo bottles.

2007-01-03T10:05:00.000+05:30

Very simple designs but highly usable. The first shampoo bottle shows a pump that can be screwed and fixed. This helps when you are traveling and carrying it. Also accidental you don't pump the shampoo out.

The second bottle shows a cap that is at the bottom of the bottle. Or you can say the bottle is supposed to be kept upside down. This helps the thick shampoo to slide down and be available immediately once you open the cap.

The third bottle is a mouth freshener with a integrated cup. Isn't that great..you can know how much you are using.

But the usability of such small shampoo sachet is still in question. You tend to use this while you are in bathroom and try to tear it off. But you have slippery hands and you cant. Can there be better design to break this sachet with wet hands.

Salary Survey for HCI professionals in India

2007-01-03T09:37:00.000+05:30

The salary survey for 2006 usability professionals in India is out on www.upahyderabad.org

Videocon TV remote usability

2006-12-24T12:05:00.000+05:30

I have this Videocon portable(14 inch) TV. If you look at the remote, the designers have placed the most unused buttons(Frequency, Chanel scan & color settings) very close to most frequently used buttons(volume). They thought the user is going to carry this portable TV every alternate day to USA and then to India. They the user needs to change the frequency from 50Hertz to 60Hz. Then they thought user needs to keep scanning channels every day. It was such a headache that i finally chopped off the rubber buttons. You can see that. Thanks Videocon for providing rubber buttons.

Philips DVD player. Placement of buttons ?

2006-12-24T12:01:00.000+05:30

Check out this Philips DVD player. Everytime i have to eject the CD, to put the next one, i often swithch off this player. You know why ?.. .the power off button is next to CD window and eject button is far at the end. Dont you think is should have been reversed ?

Windows mobile 5 features

2006-12-22T11:27:00.000+05:30

The new windows mobile 5 OS do not allow for adding separate video for any contacts. You can just add picture. But look at the size of picture it displays.. It like a small icone.
Also the dialing pad do not have some important buttons(call history, Speed dial) mapped to hard buttons. You have to use the touch screen only...
Another big issue is it does not closes applications (eg- file manager, camera, photos viewer, music player) once you open it. They all run in background and eat your Ram. There is no exit menu for any application.
The fonts are very small. You cant really increase size to make it readable.
And off course it hangs many times.
I like it but still needs improvement.

Usability of windows mobile ActiveSync 4.5

2006-12-21T22:26:00.000+05:30

Guys i never thought of writing blog until i stumbled across horrible usability of Microsoft windows mobile PC software. They call it ActiveSync 4.5 It is used to synch the pocket PC ( PDA mobile phone) with your outlook and also install software on your mobile through your PC. But my god.. such a pathetic design.. too much of text and all confusion..

This image shows a add and remove tool of this ActivSync.. Can anyone tell me what should i do to remove software or add software.. God knows,.. its packed with soooo much extra text , i am lost. I just want to remove one software. IT confuses me whether i should click OK or Remove. For this any user needs to carefully read each text twice.

UPA Hyderabad

2006-08-28T14:02:00.000+05:30

I am happy to inform you all that Hyderabad Chapter of UPA has been formed. We invite everyone working towards HCI to come and join us. www.upahyderabad.org