QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features & assumptions

[Robert Taylor]

Ortwin Regel wrote:
>>
>> Reading these posts of the last few days it has just occurred to me
>> that it's not Carsten we should be beating up on here.
>> Who the heck asked for translucency and flashy animations?
>>
>> Management seem to be asking for this "alpha" bleeding rubbish, and
>> it seems to me that we users need to be telling management that we
>> don't care a heck for it.
>>
>> Sure, I know the iPhone does this now, but that doesn't mean Openmoko
>> has to do it. Do we really want Openmoko to be just another iPhone
>> clone? I know we see a fair number of posts on here about the iPhone,
>> but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation
>> really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the
>> mobile phone market?
>>
>> DISCLAIMER: I haven't used an iPhone, and I'm not terribly interested
>> in it. I do use a Mac as my main desktop, but that's not for the
>> animation, it's because I want something that "just works" when I sit
>> down at my computer. All us Mac fans found Expose to be a *massive*
>> UI improvement when it was released, but that's because virtual
>> desktops have always been rubbish on a Mac - with so many windows on
>> a single desktop *some* way of finding the bottom-most one was
>> required. The other day I was talking to a Linux developer who turned
>> off compiz on his desktop because it slowed down his productivity -
>> you simply don't need Expose if you have virtual desktops (which
>> admittedly are not suitable for my granny).
>>
>> It seems to me that, whilst the iPhone's animation may "wow" people,
>> what really distinguishes the iPhone is the same attention to UI
>> simplicity that Apple have always brought to their products. It does
>> a FEW things amazingly well, and that's where it separates itself
>> from the majority of phones on the market, none of which *quite* suit
>> the mass-market of users. Most users don't want to understand the
>> filesystem on their mobile phone, so Apple do away with it; Apple
>> have made it spectacularly easy (so much so that one must include in
>> the discussion the word "intuitive") to email a photo taken on the
>> camera or grabbed from a webpage, but they make it impossible to
>> email attachments under many other circumstances. The majority of
>> users don't want to copy & paste text on their mobile phones, so
>> Apple just got rid of it - other manufacturers "muddy up" the phones
>> they aim at girls and little old ladies (excuse me) by including the
>> ability to copy & paste; Apple have realised that only a minority of
>> business-phone users want or need that.
>>
>> The Neo & Freerunner have both been "smartphones", and that's surely
>> the interest that draws Linux users to this list. We want to be able
>> to shell into our unix servers, read PDFs and so on. The idea of an
>> open phone fires our imagination because we can integrate our
>> contacts from our LDAP servers and our diary with an iCal server, we
>> can do whatever the heck we want with Openmoko - we want to ADD
>> features, not remove them.
>>
>> In the context of that, does animation and transparency matter? Heck
>> no! We want a phone that displays text & icons on the screen, and as
>> long as the phone does that quick enough, we don't want you wasting
>> resources on trying to make the "experience" more flashy.
>>
>> There has been mention in these threads about the screen requirements
>> of smaller phones. I can only conclude from this that FIC are
>> planning to leverage their experience in building smartphone hardware
>> in order to break into to the larger market of small "girlie" and
>> "soccer mom" phones. Fine, but please don't do this at the expense of
>> your smartphone market. Honestly, I don't see how you can do this
>> well, without castrating your power-phone offerings.
>>
>> Parts of this conversation have focussed on making a "use case" for
>> VGA screens, but please, FIC management, make a use case for
>> transparency and flashy animations before having Carsten work on it.
>> Whilst I was writing an Apple spam arrived here, promoting today's
>> new iPhone announcement - I clicked on the link to iSteve's
>> presentation. The "enterprise" take-up from Fortune 500 companies was
>> surely impressive, but this leverage is because of Exchange-
>> compatibility and all the features that OS X gives to the iPhone for
>> free, not the flashy animations. This is where Openmoko can compete.
>>
>> I could write a lot, LOT more here,
>>
>> Stroller.
>>
>>     
I second this.

Rob