First impressions of Neo1973

Ole Tange openmoko.org at tange.dk
Mon May 14 10:14:43 CEST 2007


= Hardware =

== Size ==

The phone is BIG. There is no other word for it. It makes it even
worse when you open the phone and see that a lot of space is wasted:
Half of the thickness is taken by the battery, a very small vibrator,
2 small loud speakers and half of the 2 antennas - leaving 50% of half
of the phone as empty space. The carrying hole is just making this
worse. I am not sure if you could have made the phone slimmer, but it
seems that it would have been easy to make room for a battery twice
the size.

I usually carry my Siemens S55 and my Samsung NV3 camera in one
pocket. But swapping the S55 with the Neo is going to take some time
getting used to.


== The screen ==

The resolution of the screen is awesome. I still need to try it in sunshine.


== The hardware button ==

There is a hardware button on the left side. But it is hard to press
(I have to use force), which will limit its usefulness. Had it been
extended a few mm then it is in  the perfect location for my thumb and
might be useful as a CTRL key.


== The power button ==

To turn the phone on you have to hold the power button for 5 seconds.
You get no feedback during this and it is hard to feel if the button
is actually pressed. It would have been nice with some feedback. A
status LED would be sufficient.


== Connecting the USB ==

I still have doubt whether the USB cable is actually plugged in and
the phone charging, because I cannot turn on a completely discharged
phone as soon as I plug it in. If my Siemens S55 is completely
discharged I plug it in and from that second I can use the phone
normally again.

An LED on the phone to should it when it was charging and show when it
was ready to turn on would help a lot.


== The MicroSD holder ==

Putting the MicroSD card into the phone takes some practice. The
holder is very fragile, so you probably only want to do this once and
do data transfer via USB/Bluetooth.

If this is not improved for the mass market phone the package must
contain a "how-to-install-microSD-card" otherwise I predict broken
MicroSD holders.


= Software =

Software is very limited at this point: I have yet to place my first
call using the phone.


== Placement of buttons ==

I read from left to right. I will expect most people, who will use the
phone, will do that. I believe it is because of this, that I find it
natural that if presented with 2 buttons 'previous' and 'next' I will
expect 'previous' to on the left side.

That is similar to the web browsers I use: Left means back, right
means forward. If I click something wrong in the web browser and want
to undo that I press back (i.e. left) again.

So to me the following actions should be put on the left side:

left, undo, back, cancel, previous, no, reject-call

and these should be put on the right hand side:

right, apply, forward, OK, next, yes, answer-call, do-it

>From this I also find the following gestures natural:

Drag-left = backspace
Drag-right = space

Backspace is similar to undo and if a gesture is needed for the
left-grouped buttons then this should be it. The right-grouped buttons
should have the opposite (similar to space).


== UI improvements ==

I like to drag things. In the calendar I cannot see the whole day. I
have to use the scrollbar (which BTW seems not to be proportionally
resized). I would like to simply click on the time and drag that up or
down (like when you drag around a PDF file in e.g. Acroread). And do
the same with the days in week view.

The feedback is bad. I was often in doubt whether I had clicked or
not. Using the hour glass icon more would help some but not solve
everything.


== Application: Screen rotate ==

This rotates to landscape and back. Neat. But again the feedback is too slow.

/Ole




More information about the community mailing list