Still pressing for recognition of the significance (for some) of qwerty keyboards on mobile devices, Steve has a chance conversation in London and is shocked how narrowly many people seem to still use their smartphones. Here's his subsequent musings.
Read on in the full article.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es60)
I'm a hardened t9 user. Actually bought a 6822 last year and hated it. Same with e61. So my new phone is a e60. With a nice simple key layout.
It's all about perception Steve. Most ordinary non-technical people simply aren't aware of the extensibility factor of smartphones. They see smartphones in terms of being *phones* - and the phones their non-smartphone owning mates have will have cameras for sure and maybe MP3 players, and so the smartphone owner sees that the same way - a phone, but with perhaps slightly better quality features. There is just not the awareness of adding extra bits and bobs to them.
I got an N70 recently, my first smartphone. Within an hour I'd upgraded the firmware, upgraded Opera, installed Google Maps, Tom Tom Mobile 5, SmartMovie etc. On a recent car journey with some friends I proceeded to use it as a talking SatNav, mapping device, movie player, audio player, and of course phone. All on one trip. My friends asked "Is that just an ordinary phone?".
It's really an education issue, and an ease of use issue. If the marketing and especially user interfaces were designed by ordinary people rather than geeks in labs (lets face facts here), there would be much greater awareness and ease of access to full smartphone capabilities and other data services.
I was in a 3 shop last night here in Australia (getting a SIM for my new P990i), and was interested to discover that the E61 is selling very well for 3 here, simply because of its QWERTY keypad. The M600i was displayed right next to it, and the salesman didn't even seem aware that the M600i offered pretty much the same as the E61 (except WiFi).
In fact, given the choice between the two of them, and with some of 3's packages, the lack of WiFi is not such a bad thing for the M600i, which has a much better UI.
Oh, and the Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard works fine with my new P990i, and probably the M600i as well, using the standard Bluetooth drivers. Makes for a pretty cool device.
It's not just smartphones that see this phenomenon, how many people these days buy PCs and never install any extra software?
My parents just use their computer for word processing (using the bundled word processor), spreadsheets (using the bundled SS software), the internet (using the bundled browser) and email (using the bundled email client). In a way there's an argument for selling cheap cutdown computers, in the same way there are cheap "dumb" phones, because at the moment 95% of PCs' abilities go to waste on many people.
Then there's the "buy anything new whether it's useful to them or not" factor: loads of people buy high capacity music players, then only use a fraction of the space, simply because they're the latest editions (that's probably why Apple has started focusing on smaller capacities with the Nano, larger capacity iPods were needlessly large physically for people who didn't use them fully).
Once the shine had worn off my Series 60 phone, I realised I hardly ever installed any native software on it any more and it was feeling like a bit of a brick in my pocket.
Now I'm using a SE K800i, which admittedly isn't that much smaller, but it has a good camera, great screen, and I can still do my email, play music, games, etc.
Perhaps if I'd actually got started on Symbian development when I originally planned to, it would be a different story. But as it is, I think my experience reflects what many people think: that there's little practical advantage in using a Symbian phone for most people.
I think that the T9 vs QWERTY view expressed by lad mag writer is a European phenomenon.
My sister in Canada never asks me to buy stuff from Europe. So I was shocked when she asked me to pick up an E70. The reason? SMS is picking up in NA and she has started to text but does not like T9 style predictive texting. Most of my american friends turn off the T9 and multi-tap. I think the E70 will be bigger in North America than it is here.
That is the best 'stowaway keyboard' I have tried, and I get a full word processor, Jotter, spreadsheet and loads of other things.
Only problem though. When I now try to upgrade to P990 is that my little OPL thingie for P900 - unfinished but working - that can display Psion Word format files and convert them to Symbian Word, rtf or plain text does not yet allow itself to be ported to the P990.
Absolutely hate keyboard phones. I dont see the use of having them. I hardly write pages worth of documents on the go. For day to day usage a phone keypad is nicer and easier to use. Keyboard = clunky, large and ugly device.
A wireless keyboard on the other hand would be nicer since i can take it out whenever i feel. Which isnt much. That would allow to enjoy the form factor and usability of the phone. Keyboards just arent a big enough day to day feature to add in.
Which just goes to show that it takes all sorts. *every* single time I have to write in a real name or time or email address etc. in a text or email or Note, I breath a sigh of relief that I've got a keyboard and am not having to jump through hoops with a T9 keypad......
8-)
Steve
my 2 cents says
[LIST=1]
[*]effective qwerty usage presumes sitting upright, both hands available, thumbs on home keys, fingers and brain trained (hypnotized?) to fly to correct key
[/LIST][LIST=1]
[*]convenient pda / smartphone usage needs to cater for standing or walking, only 1 thumb available and limited training beyond abc
[/LIST]
se p990 with flip removed: has wi-fi etc (but does it have or accept abc touchscreen?)
Nah, the solution is the E70. Absolute best of both worlds. Which is why I'm using it at the moment. 8-)
Steve
Too bad also that Nokia likes to screw up the battery department in their "multimedia computers", so if I used the N80 "broadly" as power user (online in msn, imap idle for push mail, music player, reading ebook, maybe browsing on wifi) the battery is dead after 4-5 hours... The smartest phone on the world is just dumb with a dead battery.
slitchfield wrote:Nah, the solution is the E70. Absolute best of both worlds. Which is why I'm using it at the moment. 8-)
And a maybe even better solution could be Siemens' rotating keyboard as seen in their SK65 model: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/mobilephones/0,39023925,39162402,00.htm
The nice thing about this design is that it allows for a much nicer phone design since there is no need for these ugly "ears" on each side of the phone. Plus the numeric keypad is still accessible even when the qwerty keyboard is opened, which means that:
- Entering numbers is easier and faster than with the E70's solution
- Applications relying on number key shortcuts can still be used normally even when the keyboard is opened
- No need to have number keys on the keyboard. This frees up loads of space to allow for more special caracters that can be directly accessible from the keyboard
With respect to battery life, not all models are equal here. The E61 and E70 both have excellent life and only really have to be charged every other day, especially with the new v2.x firmware.
The terrible battery life of the N80 has been noted in many places....
Steve
I want to buy a Stowaway Bluetooth Universal Keyboard in order to use it with my P990.
Lithgow said: "....Oh, and the Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard works fine with my new P990i, and probably the M600i as well, using the standard Bluetooth drivers. Makes for a pretty cool device...."
The phone P990i does have a HID (human input device) profile? that will allow users to connect the Stowaway keyboard and use it for basic keyboard functionality without some of the advanced features provided by our software package. It means that I don´t need a driver? . Some of the functionality I will not have with this setup is the application launching shortcuts, menu navigation and diacritical marking?