Automatically recognizes smile faces and takes the picture : A new sony digital cam
And not related to planes but to mobile devices future a interesting article in the computer world
Varig would for sure be just slightly above the militar, stand-still soldier position category.
I hate flighing old airplanes that were “modernized”. By modernized I mean “Less room for your legs, less space between you and the tray table (actually no space).
Well, I finally got to use the HTC touch, and the only word that came to my mind was: crap.
Why? simply when you look at the videos you expect a little more.
First disappointment was the sensibility. Ok, it’s a lot better then the N800’s but at the same level they wanted to sell the user the “touch” marketing thing, to face the IPhone touch style but it just doesn’t work that easy. I tried once, twice and finally was able to bring the menu up, that was when the second disappointment happened:
Not smooth as it should. When you activate the “touch UI” you get a grey looking big GRID that animates like my grandmother running a marathon. (Actually my grandma would be a lot smoother, as she’s quite healthy) Then you flick your fingers across the screen and get the famous cube animation (again more or less smoth) and can look at the 3 main screens. And this is my third and final disappointment :
Shallow. Only 3 screens (maybe more) but the most important critic : it’s just ONE layer. you click and you will see the regular windows mobile UI (yes, you know those old scrollbars drawn only with lines?) and it’s very very bad designed UI. So people shouldn’t take me for not saying about the others because I already criticized here the Nokia multimedia UI for giving us a incredible taste of wow (the N95 screen) but then killing our excitement in the first click.
Please manufacturers: NO SHALLOW RICH UIs ok? Better you should call it menus or launcher. Only that but you end up bothering more than helping users. Why? Not only users today need to deal with Rich IDLE screen that can already launch your applications but also not-so rich menus, shortcut keys and multimedia menus. A lot of ways to accomplish a basic task. Instead of help you create doubt and that’s BAD.
So, if you are not a Windows mobile die hard fan, I really don’t recommend the HTC touch. And if you are a WM fan, go with other windows mobile device!
Ha
I knew some of the complains I had were not “simple a bunch of users bothered” it was really a matter. Also the fact that return to music controls could be a drag also needed a shortcut.
Enters the ” Double click on home button ”
If you double click it it will take either to your favorites or to your music shortcuts. What if I’m listening to music and want to make a call? Still need to go the regular way.
Well, this just show how smart (not saying that the update via itunes is working nicely 100%) is the format of providing a solid simple device, and add features along, as you need to keep the users with you, even if your device is a old lady in feature wise matters.
I know the other manufactures had done this (SE with OTA firmware update, Nokia with the PC suite update) but the fact that they have hundreds of models would become impossible to do what apple is doing thus this will count as positive to the end users that don’t see the “whole” picture (and should not see, just look for a device that fits their needs).
This is were I get pissed: another issue that is going to be known as an Apple advantage, but is only possible because of the Iphone and Apple’s nature: a reduced line of products. Less hardware = less software = less problem = better solutions in the same time the others need to do the same for 100x more hardware versions.
After 30 something hours flying, arriving in the apartment in Oulu at 2am, lots of meetings and a fast flight to Helsinki I finally have a free slot of time with my mind working at least at 33% to post something. Unfortunately is going to be a barely usable post. Also I was able to dinner with my good fellows in Oulu, Tiago, Francisco, Claudio, Igor and Erika, Meagan and her Danish friend. Nice company for a fast one day and half visit.
(that’s it for the personal diary)
Casual, good reading for all your user interaction needs :
Useful multitouch products from Thomas, talks about multi touch is more than iPhone and Surfaces. I really believe in this, and the power this can have for example in little kid’s schools. Imagine the little guys playing around in huge multitouch tables that can not only recognize shapes, but give them physical properties and enable the kids to create “incredible” machine like toys with just their little fingers? I think “little big planet” is going to be my next inspiration =)
I already liked the way Google mail does that, than Asa Raskin (yes son of Jeff Raskin) wrote about it and you can read it all here with good example. I keep imagining how could I design this to be also quite easy to do on mobile devices (the very old trash bin concept?) and avoid modal warnings in the small screen.
And, while I think Sony Ericsson was the faster evolving ui, from scary to really nice, in the mobile world, these pictures (along with the others available) shows how much SE is creating a lot of different UI concepts in the same small box. Maybe this is just too much isn’t it? Maybe not… The final decision comes from the end users =)
In san francisco, Jan Chipchase from Nokia, is always a good fast reading. Now talking about Openness, but you can just click to see the Ny Times N95 Ad. Also, in the N95 field you can take a look at Stephan’s post with a Nokia Store ad “Can you phone do this?” predictable, but indeed it nailed the question. Speaking of ADs I really suggest you to look at this one:
This is pure Gondry love for the Razr2. I don’t think that phone deserved such AD =)
*Ha, I was not wrong about my feeling. this is from Gondry himself =) Nice. You can watch a interview about the ad here
Apart from that, Helsinki is now dressed on shades of green, yellow and red and I’m really sad I cannot go outside and take a lot of nice pictures from those incredible trees =). To make it up I can only admire the availability of a “pillow menu”
After the Nokia x Apple War article, it’s time for a Nokia’s primetime : check out the cover material about Nokia to understand why iPhone don’t bother that much. (it bothers on the UI side, and not being the most innovative one… what already happened without apple)
The first post I would like to recommend is from Stefan Constantinescu and while I consider him to be a Nokia fan, some times he writes things also against. Funny enough this is the article where I do not agree with him. I REALLY don’t think that windows mobile idle screen is a good idea. Not at all. Idle screen should be simple and the gateway for the events that happened when you were not able to answer them. (clock became a standard). The post from his site that is really eye catching is the one where he talks about the O2 deal with apple for the Iphone : 40% revenue?
The second post is from Robert Fabricant, executive creative director of Frog design. He talks about 5 reasons the iPhone is older than you think. Shallow but worth a glance
From the web2.0 mobile world comes this podcast with Tuomo Sihvola, Head of Communities and Inventor of Widsets about Widsets and will kill some doubts you may have as well the fact that all new s40 devices will have Widsets pre-installed.
Also from Nokia, the video that illustrates the 4th screen concept :
Ok, A lot has been said but I haven’t heard this too much lately so it’s also good to show the iPhone downsides, and believe me: they are quite serious.
Why? Because the phone in the iPhone brings a heavy task to the device: To be someone’s phone. This implies in 2 basic things :
1) Good reception, thus good quality on your calls
2) Good volume
The iphone is CRAP in these 2 statements when compared to any of my Nokia phones. I have been walking on a low signal place with both phones and the iphone is out 50% of the time. A shame.
In the volume matters, the iPhone speakers is at the limite of usable (for voice) and it’s quite lame for music listening.
So, if you have a carrier that is “not that good”, but your Nokia/SE/Samsung phone works ok on it think twice before changing to an unlocked iPhone because you’re going to be surprised how many times it will be without carrier coverage.
Also, if you are into listening to music in your iPhone one thing REALLY bothers me: No music keys. Sometimes I just want to change music. Just that… I don’t want to slide to unlock, and then try to find the forward button just to listen to the next tune.
I think I will make a hack to allow volume to change music instead of rising the volume =) but even with that I really like my Nokia devices when it comes to music.
Conclusion: iPhone is like a “Gorgeous” cake but a little rotten on the inside. I really like to have a incredible UI but I need to remember one thing: Its using my sim card, to its my phone, and the first and most important thing is to be able to make and receive calls. I think this makes pretty clear the advantages of being “mature” on the market.
Hello Apple : a little more love on the Antennas and speakers next time ok?
Ps1 : I know some fan boy can say “but the iphone was not tested on this carrier… or your carrier sucks not the phone”, but I have been using several phones that were not even released on Brazil (thus, not tested) without carrier problems until now.
Ps2 : Looks that I’m not alone on this… here
This is how the professionals do it : click to read Michael Mace’s post
” I don’t know who will win, but I’m pretty sure that the main losers will be all of the other device companies and mobile operators who happen to be hanging around on the hill.
My advice to them: Run.”
If you always missed some good video management tool for all you internet video needs, here’s a good solution : The videocenter application.
The application is a hub for internet videos, local stored videos and in the future for other video sources, like mythTV (explained in arthur’s web site here). You are able to stream, download organize, and soon enough to do a lot more =)
You can check out a nice vide made by my buddy Arthur (Morpheuz) :
The application is already available as a beta in the garage website
As any application I think everyone involved would be pretty happy to receive feedback / bugs / suggestion so please help the team behind it.
It seems that one of my biggest doubts in the S60 UI is heading to an end: the menu button.
This website from a Nokia fan posted some images about that the icon maybe changed in a new device to a more understandable home icon.
I really wish this thing is really true, because I really don’t dig the menu icon since it first appearance on my life (my first 7650)
update
I also noticed on the phone picture one more thing : the C key (clear, used for delete) is now similar to the iphone back arrow with an X. I’m not saying that this is copying the iphone, as it was not invented by apple, but maybe is it influenced by it? We will never know =)
Remembering my old days of street fighter 2 player, I can imagine apple in one side and Nokia in the other while I looked at the new products from Apple.
Itunes music WIFI x Nokia Music Store
Nokia announced last week it’s service and was received well, maybe with a little bit of doubt about it’s price (no more doubt: only 1 cent above itunes price) and also microsoft DRM (not so big problem). Today Apple unleashed not only the client but the service running on WIFI. For people where carriers already offer good price for full access in data packages this seems to not be a competition, but for places where wifi is widely available and you use more wifi than celular networks to get data, the services are quite similar and Apple is for sure ahead with lower price.
Both offers seamlessly integration with your desktop. Just a shame that both have DRM.
Ipod touch x Nokia N800
This is very hard for me. I just like my n800 too much, but everyone is going to say it so here it goes:
Ipod touch is a really competitor to the N800 or nokia internet tablet family. Why? How can you be so sure without ever using it? Well, I have an iPhone for quite a while now and I can garantee : It’s the best mobile browser experience. But it was more expensive, with contract and so on. Now it’s 50 or 100 dollars cheaper, same capacity (16 gigas, but not included on the N800 and that would make the price goes up at least 200 bucks). So I can see this is REALLY a serious threat to the N800 positioned as a “internet tablet device”. The Safari works better, zooming is better, snappier.
What’s funny is that everything points to the fact the the Ipod has the same hardware as the Iphone, so a 600mhz CPU against the 320mhz on the N800. How this thing is cheaper? The camera is not enough to make the N800 more expensive, and the battery life of the touch is a lot better than on the N800 (ok 640 screen x 800×480) but come one, we deserve a better price =)
Ringtones : HA!
this was really, one of the first things on my mind when they announced the iPhone. “how apple could make more money? Unmm… ringtones for sure”. It’s funny that people are complaining, but it’s quite common here in brasil to pay twice a song price for a ringtone, that sometimes are even MIDIS (so : no band recorded, no studio was needed, just a keyboard and a license of a simple media software).
It sucks for users, but was a brilliant step for Apple, and of course makes the life of people that are not tech savvy easier.
Price drop on the iPhone
This was REALLY a surprise. 200 dollars LESS from the 8giga bytes? (I’m so happy I sold my 4 giga fast enough) This makes the 8gb iPhone quite a deal for those who want to be AT&T slow network slaves. I think a lot of buyers are also pretty pissed with that :)
The new iPods
The “phatty” was real. The new nano is really something, unm, let’s say, of a doubtful taste. Ok, I have the most incredible respect for the design team at apple, and I can’t see another way of doing such a small device with that screen without killing the scroll wheel but : it is VERY funny. Almost a joke. Looks like a mockup of someone in the web. Apart from the form factor the nano is amazing, thin, metal on the back and a real nice and high resolution display. But I need to say: I can’t stand watching videos on small screens like this. So it’s more for “screen satisfaction” than for “real video watching screen”.
The classic has now a full metal body and a really big 160gigabyte disk. That’s some storage for a media player but it’s not something really new.
Shuffle now is also in PRODUCT RED. Ok, so what.
But what I really want to know is
Now that I’ve briefly talked about what you can read on several more professional web sites, I will say what I really want to know about this devices:
1) Does the Ipod touch will be able to have MAIL? Come one Apple, you placed safari. You gave it the youtube but no MAIL? is there, just scp the application package to the image and release to your future customers.
2) Is the Touch hackable like the Iphone? Can I install native hacked applications on it ? =)
3) GAMES. Iphone games please.
4) Ringtones of music we already own? Can we do it?
5) Does the itunes store update coming to the iPhone, closes the 3rd party hacks =)
6) Where is the goddamn iPhone software unlocking solutions?????
Update, I made a typo on the n800 speed. sorry, thanks Cfit.
Now you can check the video that started the whole talking about Nokia cloning iPhone, and really understand what happened there.
The video shows the Nokia CEO explaining the new multimedia UI , and in the end the small portion that was the polemic one.
After watching my attention went completely to the new multimedia UI. And all I can finally say is “Ahh it was about time”. Why that? Well for some time (since N91 I think) I have been asking myself WHY. Why put a dedicated key that just open ONE screen with ANOTHER launcher for 5 applications (customizable) and that’s it ? This was present in most of 3rd edition Symbian phones.
Then, It evolved into this :
A much nicer openGL ES (I supposed as it has nice effects) screen, that is quite juicy but has one deadly problem: It’s just THAT. you click, you go back to the hell that became s60. If you take a time to go to your music listing, you going to see a list with 2 to 3 icons on each line. Unbelievable.
Ok, now I thought the new phones had the last thing, the carousel thing shown on some pictures and announced by Nokia, but the video showed us finally one thing that makes sense: the multimedia key is becoming on full (or almost I don’t know) UI!. Yes, finally. It took four iterations and now the video show a full usable thing that appears to be quite simple and to solve one of the worst problems in s60 IMHO: too much launchers. Too much applications looking different and behaving different. This is a nice step, a needed one, and while I like to criticize a lot I also now when to send the compliments for this kind of release.
The only thing that worries me (of course can be just a video thing) is that you actually need to circulate too much the ipod-wheel-like thing to scroll up and down. And this is a huge iPod problem. Once you have thousands of songs is quite boring to keep circulating to scroll a full list of songs and the scroll back up. The iPhone solved this problem beautifully with a index on the side. So I consider this thing as shown in the video a nice step for Nokia but maybe a step backwards in terms of market, as mainly Apple has at least product speaking accepted and fixed that.
About The VP speech and the final section showing the iPhone I keep my opinion : To show something that does not evolve from iPhone could not be something to be proud on, and they would be just great enough just announcing the new UI and leaving the iPhone like possibilities in the future for other occasion. The new UI is nice enough and didn’t deserve to be shadowed by a 10 sec session that wanted to show that Nokia will not stand still staring at Apple’s UI.
To read more about this from a Nokia oriented mind visit Stephan’s post. For more info about Nokia’s VP opinions about the iPhone visit this web site.
Its funny to see how companies run against Apple’s monopoly in the personal media players (Ipod) and actually can be faster than apple:
Samsungs introduces it’s YP-P2 touchscreen player as a threat to the upcoming rumored touchscreen based IPod. So everything ok up to this point right? Wrong. The device is sexy, sleek, and looks incredible good but watch the video to see how crude the UI is! [link for the video]
Even worst : the bright, glowing thing on the botton is not a menu button. It’s just an indicator of something (maybe bluetooth on, battery is dying)
So this makes me wonder: if you are a big big company. You have the money to do great products (and you do actually) why such kind of mistakes leaves the company? Does any CEO or product manager tested this device, like this one and said ” Owo! that’s nice, this represents well what we are trying to do here” ? I don’t believe so. I really don’t believe so.
Please, give a little bit more love to the UI before releasing it. It saves you a lot of bad reviews and unsatisfied costumers.
