I wound up reviewing six
phones, which meant that I didn’t have alot of room to expound on each one. I used a sort of shorthand
toindicate how clumsy or efficient their software design was: a SoftwareSimplicity Score that tallied up how many steps it takes to performcommon tasks like looking up a number or viewing your Recent Calls list.But in this newsletter, I have plenty of room to expound. So expound I will.Take the simple act of looking up a name in a
phone’s address book.This is something you do a lot. It should be easy. It should be direct.You should be able to highlight Casey Ryback out of a haystack of nameswith a minimum of button presses.The worst system is the one I’ve seen on Motorola
phones. Once youget to the address book, you can type ONE letter–say, R. The phonehighlights the first name that starts with R (say, Susan Randall). Sofar, so good.But now you can’t hit the next letter of the name. If you hit Y,hoping to highlight Ryback, you jump to last names starting with Y. Youcan’t get to Ryback except by pressing the down arrow key over and overagain. It’s horribly inefficient, and I don’t know how people with suchcellphones can stand it.I have no idea what goes through the mind of Motorola when theydesign stuff like this. But one thing’s for sure: the designers ofsystems like this do not use their own phones. They’d go stark, ravingmad.The more common system lets you type several letters of the name youwant. If you want Ryback, you type R, and then Y, and boom–you’vehighlighted the name.Trouble is, most phones don’t have a whole alphabet keyboard. So yougenerally have to use the multi-tap system, where you press 7 threetimes to get the R, and then the 9 key three times to get the Y. It’sworkable, but still not especially efficient.What I’d like to know is: Why is the multitap even necessary? Theletters on the 7 key are PQRS; the letters on the 9 key are WXYZ. It’sa pretty good bet that no name in my address book begins with theletters QX, or PW, or SZ; if I hit 79, it should *know* I want Ryback,since that’s the only possible match for 79. I know it’s possible; I’ve seen it on a few phone–from Kyocera, forexample. (The only thing better is the Treo’s super-cool shortcut,where you just type the person’s initials–but then again, the Treo hasa full QWERTY keyboard.)I have the same question about turning the ringer off. That’ssomething you do several times a week: when you go into a theater, ameeting, a dinner. This is something most people probably do *much*more often than, say, buying ringtones or downloading a screensaver.Why, then, do some phones make you burrow into a menu to turn offthe darned ringer? (It makes me particularly annoyed when I find, onthe same phone, that one of the precious keys on the phone is dedicatedto buying games or ringtones.)And one more, while I’m on a roll: As I mentioned in today’s column,it bugs the heck out of me to have to hold down the Power (actually,End) button to *turn on* my flip phone. I can understand the reason for the long press on a slab phone (youdon’t want it to get turned on in your pocket). I can understand therequirement to turn the phone *off* by holding down the key (because atap already means “hang up”). But it makes absolutely no sense to haveto hold down the button to turn the phone on. In fact, I don’t evenknow why more phones don’t have an on/off *switch*.So what I want to know is: Is there a reason they can’t implementthe best possible system? Am I missing some advantage to makingmillions of people fumble with all those extra keypresses? Does it*cost* more to think these things through? Are the cellphone companiesdeliberately designing dorky interfaces for their low-end phones, sothat the carriers can upsell you to fancier ones?I don’t know the answer. I do know, however, that because cellphonesare tiny and cramped, their menu systems require *more* thought, notless. And I hope someone forwards this note on to anyone they know inthe cellphone-design business.