NASCAR14FAN
12-21-2005, 06:15 PM
Wednesday December 21, 2005.
http://www.mobileburn.com/media/motorola/a910/a910_screen_standby-IMG_3955.jpg
http://www.mobileburn.com/media/motorola/a910/a910_screen_standby2-IMG_3998.jpg
http://www.mobileburn.com/media/motorola/a910/a910_screen_menu-IMG_3956.jpg
A couple of weeks ago while at an event in Seattle, I had the chance to check out Motorola's upcoming WiFi enabled A910 handset. The A910 itself is worth discussing, but what I want to talk about in this piece is the new user interface that Motorola is rolling out on it.
Yes. Finally. A new UI from Motorola.
For starters, gone is the dedicated menu button and its 4 horizontal lines icon. The menu key, while making some sense, was always a point of contention for users looking to possibly move to a Motorola phone from one that was built by another manufacturer. Over the years Motorola has made a number of concessions of this type, such as swapping the position of the red and green call buttons. This isn't to say that Motorola was wrong in putting the red button on the left, just that everybody else did it the other way around. Which is what they do now. Well, the same situation applies to the menu button. I think it is a fine idea, even if the icon was not too clear, but the fact that none of the other major manufacturers made use of a similar design meant that Motorola handsets were always different from what non-Motorola users were used to.
And since Motorola is looking to gain market share, they have to woo consumers that currently use phones made by other companies. The easier they can make the transition, the more people that will be willing to try one of their phones. Or at least that is the theory. As such, the menu key is gone and the new UI uses the right softkey to get to the main menu. The left softkey brings up options that can be accessed right away from the standby screen.
Another major change to the UI is the way menus and sub-menus are displayed. In the old system, virtually everything was a full screen menu. There were some exceptions, like the oddball "Media Gallery" menu with its icons, but in general all menus and sub-menus covered the entire display. There was no feel of overlapping windows to it, as people that use modern desktop computers (and handhelds) have become accustomed to.
Now you get menus that pop-up over top of the existing display. Nudging the d-pad to the right on an appropriate item brings up a sub-menu, which pops out to the right. Moving left on the d-pad closes the sub-menu.
As you can see in the far right photo above, long text labels now scroll horizontally if they do not fit properly into the width of the menu. I suppose this is a reasonable enough solution, but it does mean that you have to time things right to read some labels. In the photo below right you can see that sub-menus that don't have deeper sub-menus will pop on the right hand side so as to keep the prior menu mostly visible.
The photo below left shows another type of item selection menu. In this case, it shows various ways to synch up the A910 with your contacts and calendar data. An explanation of what the menu is about is up top, and the actual items themselves are listed below. This type of menu is not used for a setting (such as the active profile), but rather just for picking options needed to continue. Something along the lines of a wizard. Pick an option, continue. Similar to the main Settings menu.
Selectable settings, such as the active profile, have a different look. As you can see above, the active profile has a checked box next to it. I do question Motorola's use of check boxes here since most web users would recognize this page as meaning that multiple profiles could be selected at the same time. The use of the round "radio buttons", common in this type of scenario, would probably have been a better idea. In the current, older UI, unselected items do not have the empty box next to them, which I feel is less confusing.
But in general, the new user interface looks great and works really well - except for one point: speed.
The UI was fairly slow on the A910 I tested. This could be just because the software is unfinished. The A910 was a pre-production model, after all. But I do have my worries considering how painfully slow the contacts list in Motorola phones has been since the advent of color displays. There were no contacts in the A910 I was using, and I didn't have time to enter a hundred or so of them to test.
I suppose that we'll just have to wait for the finished product before we find out. In any event, I think the new design is a decent step forward for Motorola.
http://www.mobileburn.com/media/motorola/a910/a910_screen_standby-IMG_3955.jpg
http://www.mobileburn.com/media/motorola/a910/a910_screen_standby2-IMG_3998.jpg
http://www.mobileburn.com/media/motorola/a910/a910_screen_menu-IMG_3956.jpg
A couple of weeks ago while at an event in Seattle, I had the chance to check out Motorola's upcoming WiFi enabled A910 handset. The A910 itself is worth discussing, but what I want to talk about in this piece is the new user interface that Motorola is rolling out on it.
Yes. Finally. A new UI from Motorola.
For starters, gone is the dedicated menu button and its 4 horizontal lines icon. The menu key, while making some sense, was always a point of contention for users looking to possibly move to a Motorola phone from one that was built by another manufacturer. Over the years Motorola has made a number of concessions of this type, such as swapping the position of the red and green call buttons. This isn't to say that Motorola was wrong in putting the red button on the left, just that everybody else did it the other way around. Which is what they do now. Well, the same situation applies to the menu button. I think it is a fine idea, even if the icon was not too clear, but the fact that none of the other major manufacturers made use of a similar design meant that Motorola handsets were always different from what non-Motorola users were used to.
And since Motorola is looking to gain market share, they have to woo consumers that currently use phones made by other companies. The easier they can make the transition, the more people that will be willing to try one of their phones. Or at least that is the theory. As such, the menu key is gone and the new UI uses the right softkey to get to the main menu. The left softkey brings up options that can be accessed right away from the standby screen.
Another major change to the UI is the way menus and sub-menus are displayed. In the old system, virtually everything was a full screen menu. There were some exceptions, like the oddball "Media Gallery" menu with its icons, but in general all menus and sub-menus covered the entire display. There was no feel of overlapping windows to it, as people that use modern desktop computers (and handhelds) have become accustomed to.
Now you get menus that pop-up over top of the existing display. Nudging the d-pad to the right on an appropriate item brings up a sub-menu, which pops out to the right. Moving left on the d-pad closes the sub-menu.
As you can see in the far right photo above, long text labels now scroll horizontally if they do not fit properly into the width of the menu. I suppose this is a reasonable enough solution, but it does mean that you have to time things right to read some labels. In the photo below right you can see that sub-menus that don't have deeper sub-menus will pop on the right hand side so as to keep the prior menu mostly visible.
The photo below left shows another type of item selection menu. In this case, it shows various ways to synch up the A910 with your contacts and calendar data. An explanation of what the menu is about is up top, and the actual items themselves are listed below. This type of menu is not used for a setting (such as the active profile), but rather just for picking options needed to continue. Something along the lines of a wizard. Pick an option, continue. Similar to the main Settings menu.
Selectable settings, such as the active profile, have a different look. As you can see above, the active profile has a checked box next to it. I do question Motorola's use of check boxes here since most web users would recognize this page as meaning that multiple profiles could be selected at the same time. The use of the round "radio buttons", common in this type of scenario, would probably have been a better idea. In the current, older UI, unselected items do not have the empty box next to them, which I feel is less confusing.
But in general, the new user interface looks great and works really well - except for one point: speed.
The UI was fairly slow on the A910 I tested. This could be just because the software is unfinished. The A910 was a pre-production model, after all. But I do have my worries considering how painfully slow the contacts list in Motorola phones has been since the advent of color displays. There were no contacts in the A910 I was using, and I didn't have time to enter a hundred or so of them to test.
I suppose that we'll just have to wait for the finished product before we find out. In any event, I think the new design is a decent step forward for Motorola.