Ewan has been rocking with the Sony Ericsson W950i. In the first part of his review he looks at the music capabilities of this Walkman branded UIQ smartphone from the perspective of a power music user.
Read on in the full article.
Rocking with the W950
Reading about such defficiencies in a phone user interface causes me pain.
They must literally pour *man years* into the development of such phones and their software. All that would be needed for producing a really good phone are a modest few more weeks of work, by some UI specialist that oversees the development process from the UI point of view and has the necessary power to intervene if things go wrong.
This would already prevent stupidities like this new phone seems to offer in an alarming number.
So, why oh why, don't they do it?
Is there only exactly one good UI specialist in the whole wide world, and that one unfortunately is already working for Apple?
Let's not paint Apple in such rosy colours. Steve Jobs is a good showman , but their UI can fail just as easily.
1) You still can't resize an application window in OSX by clicking on any edge and dragging to expand, you HAVE to use one small hotspot in one corner - unlike pretty much every other windowed GUI on the planet.
2) With so many flat panel, LCD based IR remote controls, why do people still buy replacements that hvae good old fashioned buttons? Positive haptic feedback. Something the iPhone will have absolutely nothing of.
3) And maybe a comparision of the ten year old Apple Newton's UI interface to the Apple iPhone might show more similarities than you might thing. Rebaked, with colours, and able to see two touches and not one. It's not that revolutionary. I was experimenting with a Windows XP based Multi Touch screen in March 2006. It's not unique.
Making a UI is hard work - what I like might not be what Rafe wants, it is subjective, and it's tough to satisfy everyone all the time. Heck even between Rafe, Steve and I argue over items in UIQ3 and the W950, and that's three power users.
I have the same ui issues with the w950i. I bought it firstly as a walkman. smartphone second. walkman 2.0 should have been a lot better. That's what firmware updates are for, right? But has SE ever heard of the Genre tag? how the heck do i play by genre?
Well it looks like SE spent a lot of money with UIQ to build a UI just for me! I find WM5 very illogical and I really don't think the desktop metaphor works on mobile devices. UIQ3 on the W950 (and M600 & P990) is fine if you divorce yourself from the WM5 file based approach. Think in terms of 'activities' you want to perform and it works well. Also you need to select the way you want to work as there are often many way to achieve the same outcome. Also with my O2 W950 I have never managed to hit a low RAM issue - well I don't use Push email perhaps that is the reason.
Please, when you write-up the second part, tell us all which versions of the firmware you are reviewing.
Cheers,
Richard
Err.. you seriously like the looks of this one? To me it looks horribly bland, and the plastic at least in pics looks cheap etc.. definitely not my cup of tea as far as looks go.