blog.aka.me - Filed under 'UI'

September 8, 2007

Viewed 8530 times

| Japan | keitai | UI |

Thoughts on Casio's W53CA for AU

After my recent announce of the new AU Summer Collection, I had to wait a couple months before the official release of the Casio W53CA phone.

I got the phone a few weeks ago and it's a beauty, as always. It's even thinner than the 43CA, the hinge is even smaller and more elegant. The screen is wider and QVGA (480x800) resolution. You know all those phone ads where the screen looks incredible crisp, but then you buy the phone and it's some crappy 120x60 resolution... Well the 53CA screen makes pics look like printed matter. Simply incredible.

The camera is pretty amazing too. It does take beautiful Exilim pics, better than any other camera phone I have ever seen. Of course, certain lighting condition will always be challenging but this thing can survive just about anything.

So is there anything to complain about?

The only hardware minus point I found was the new keyboard. While thinner, it's also harder to operate in the dark or blindly as the keys are mounted nearly seamlessly. But you get used to it. The side buttons are also thinner and harder to press when operating the camera...

As far as software goes, nothing to complain about besides:
1. the camera interface
2. English translation

The camera interface hasn't really evolved over the past few models and I wish it had!! This is a major minus in this otherwise great product!
The submenus feel randomly crammed into the maximum 12 top menus which means that after having used this interface for more than 2 years, I still can't remember where what is what!!
And since I fiddle with menus a lot, this is a big issue.

ex 1:
when you choose the Scenes menu (called Best Shot - key #2), the first dialog box to come up asks you whether to turn it "ON" or "OFF". How weird, why not just give me access to the list of scenes?!

ex 2:
White Balance, which I use 50% of the time to correct the weak light condition auto evaluation of the camera software is hidden in the 4th position choice of menu key 6 (shot assistant). That's 11 clicks or scrolls to access it when you are trying to take a picture!!! And it doesn't even have a shortcut key while Self-Timer (mislabeled as Self-Timer Setup) gets its own top menu. I have never ever seen anybody (nor used it myself) use a self timer on a keitai camera.

ex 3:
"Album" is to view your photos. It takes the 3rd position of the menu just under Best Shot. Again it would be faster to access your pics via the Data Folder menu form the main camera menu. Why clog my menu when I am trying to take a picture.

ex 4:
Shot Size gets 4th position. Is that really a priority? I would like to see user studies that prove people change picture size before taking shots, on a regular basis. Personally, one prime reason for doing so would be to make it lighter to send it to a friend, but the "mail this" menu offers to do just that when I DO actually want to mail them.

ex 5:
Macro mode needs 7 click to be set up (although it does have a keypad shortcut). No wonder I never see people use it when they need it. Actually I rarely see people use it with conventional digital cameras either...

I guess this list could go on and on but overall, I love this phone and would NOT trade it for anything else on the market!!

But anyway, if anyone knows people at Casio/Hitachi, I would be happy to send in a more detailed report on the camera and funny English translations or even come in for a chat! Yes I am talking to you... S. ;-)

Comments [0]

August 4, 2007

Viewed 2709 times

| Japan | keitai | UI |

Loading Retweet

New AU phones - Summer 2007

This just in!
A week after DoCoMo announced their new accelerometer-fitted mobile phones, AU have just done the same with their own Summer 2007 collection...
10 phones!

Quick snippets:
- 2 Casio phones. One of them (the W53CA) is now branded with Casio's digital camera brand Exilim and boasts a 5.1 MP camera! You know which phone I am already considering buying... ;-)

Update 1:
The W53CA has finally been announced and is coming out in Tokyo on the 9th of August. It's the last one of the new collection to come out.

New details have emerged on the phone. They have really worked hard to build it as close as possible to a real camera. Here are a few points:
- 5MP CMOS sensor that goes beyond just cramming more pixels on a 2MP sensor
- wide angle!!
- 9 zone autofocus
- Auto-Exposure-Bracketing!!
- Night shoot mode
- Camera launch made ultra fast when twisting and folding the screen back on itself.

I'll be queuing next Thursday to get the phone.
Any good address in central Tokyo to get it cheaper than the Bic Camera monster?

Comments [0]

March 14, 2007

Viewed 1842 times

| FAIL | software | UI |

Loading Retweet

18,862 furious beta testers?

I have been following with interest the development of Spanning Sync's Google Calendar iCal syncing software.
But after 7 months of hard work, the development team gave the finger to 18,862 beta testers couple days ago, by launching the final v1.0 with a very steep pricing scheme that resulted in more than 90% of angry comments on their blog post announcing the launch.

Most of the discontent stems from the fact that the team opted to charge per year what most people would have paid as a one-off fee, and opted to charge as a one-off fee what most people would almost have to pay for a full-fledged software suite like iLife, and that for what angry commentors call "a little syncing script for calendars"... Needless to say, they didn't see appropriate to offer a discount to any of said 18,862 testers (to further undermine purchases from their most likely buyers)!!
Moreover, with Google and Apple strengthening their collaboration on (as of now still secret) projects, could we expect to see this syncing feature built-in the next version of OSX.
For more crusty bits, please flip through the comments. It seems there's already another script out there that does the same thing, for free: GCALDaemon!

At the end of the day, it feels as though the developers rushed it out of the door to make a quick buck before OSX new version comes out in couple months.
Now the question that tickles me is whether they will make as much selling it 60$ to fewer people or selling it 10$ to more...

Comments [0]

January 14, 2007

Viewed 1027 times

| iPhone | UI |

Loading Retweet

iPhone vs. the sense of touch

[37signals] There's an interesting tradeoff presented by the iPhone. While the phone can do more, and its interface is fluid, in some ways it widens the gulf between human and computer.
When you touch it it doesn't touch you back.
That may prove to be a good thing. It may prove that what we think we need we don't really need. The tradeoffs may payoff. But we've certainly lost the tactile feedback humans are used to when dealing with things that are right in front of us. Now the connection is simulated. Rich textures have been replaced with androgynous glass.

How can you dial the iPhone without looking at it? How can you reach in your pocket and press "1" for voicemail? How can you orient yourself with the interface without seeing it? With a traditional phone or device with buttons you can feel your way around it. You can find the bumps, the humps, the cut lines, the shapes, the sizes. You can find your way around in the dark. Not with the iPhone.

Comments [0]

October 12, 2006

Viewed 1188 times

| Japan | keitai | UI |

Loading Retweet

Winds Of Change?

Wouuuuh! the new DoCoMo phones just came out and I am blown away (for the first time in 4 years!); they have managed to 1-up ALL of the recent AU phones! My jaw is on the ground!
The Sony-Ericsson has a 3!! inch screen + a 1.5in sub-display (and a dual Mini SD !!! / Memory Stick Duo Pro slot) and at least 6 of them do GPS and most have 3MP AF cameras and can send mail attachements of up to 2!! MB (against 500kb in AU)...
*puts head in freezer & goes to buy more exclamation marks from the corner shop*

OK, more details later (I need to sleep) but I was on the market for a new phone, and hadn't really been impressed by the latest AU collections (hence my silence) and the long-awaited "number portability" freedom operation ("take your number with you when you change carrier") is 11 days away...
I have a feeling I may be taking my business to DoCoMo real soon!

Update
OK, so I can now confirm that the 903i series has introduced 11 new phones.
6 are the main usual models, that get updated everytime, and 3 have a TV and 2 others do high speed data.

Design
Well, I have to admit that nothing comes close to AU phones. The DoCoMo phones are usually bricks, where each new iteration can barely be distinguished from its previous incarnation.

Specs
The main 6 phones now have a GPS (and only them), that's a 100% improvement over the previous collection. With that comes the usual pedestrian navigation assistance services (similar to AU's Naviwalk) powered by both Navitime and Zenrin Map. And then you get the Anshin Navi to spy on your kid's whereabouts, as well as another new service to locate your phone you lost last night when you were so drunk!
All 6 phones are bilingual.
All 6 phones have a 3+ MP camera. 2 of them are CCD, the others are CMOS (arguably of lower quality)
That means they all qualify for a phone that I could use!

Noteworthy
- none of them come with Edy pre-installed, but of course they come with IC chips and you can play with their mobile credit card DCMX, and the new QuikPay service that seems to want to compete with Edy, SUICA etc... and I guess you can install Edy later, on your own.
- the NEC comes with T9 input engine, which for foreigners that email a lot in English comes handy (if you're tired of punching your keypad like it's 1998)
- you can send emails of up to 2MB, against formerly 500KB.
- oh, and that great Push-Talk service that was launched to incredible PR with the 902i series...? well, you'll have to scroll down ALL the way to the bottom of the presentation of the 903i series to find a mention of it... To be fair, AU's Hello Messenger didn't fare much better.

Me?
I am very interested in the SH903i.
It's got a nice 2.8in Aquos screen.
It's the only phone with an autofocus 3.2 MP CCD camera, and a twist-and-fold screen (a must for shooters like me).
The camera launches automatically, and in full widescreen, when you twist-and-fold the screen. That's a great touch, instead of having to do the twist thing and then launch the camera.
And a quick photo effect screen (white balance, light, resize) that you can access on the fly (smth the W41CA doesn't have and did really badly and killed my use of the camera where I had to dig into a sub menu, select the effect I wanted to use, click, then confirm that I wanted to use it (duh!!) click etc...)
It also seems to be their thinest model.

the void
Well I have never been a DoCoMo customer before, so don't know what I am up against. Don't know anything about their pricing, don't know about their customer service, don't know how slow data transfer is compared to WIN phones, don't know about their coverage, don't know how easy it is to write in English on the phone, don't know how easy the menus are to handle, don't know how easy it'll be to convince Akiko to follow me to DoCoMo so wecan still enjoy the Kazoku Waribiki etc...

Any ideas?

Comments [0]

May 17, 2006

Viewed 1169 times

| keitai | UI |

Loading Retweet

SONI ERI W42S, S for Spy Shot

I am getting pretty excited by this spy shot of what looks like a shop-shelves dummy model of the forthcoming AU Kddi Sony Ericsson WIN phone series W42S.
Notice the "Walkman" icon (weird... all AU phones are already mobile digital music players thanks to LISMO)...
Notice the weird metal dial at the bottom of the phone (some kind of attach for a hook system to strap your phone on your bag or clothes?)...
Notice the unusual Xpad with a weird plasticky area at the center (this has to glow and blink during calls, or it could be some sort of novel trackpad area... scroll pages by rubbing your thumb there...).
Woooooooooooooh!

Comments [0]

March 26, 2006

Viewed 1302 times

| GPS | keitai | UI |

Loading Retweet

AU's new 3D Navi!

woua! am all over this one! Especially cos it's not supported (yet) by my new phone, but AU is releasing a complement to their popular Naviwalk pedestrian navigation service, called 3D Navi, that will detail road intersections and destination maps in 3D. Only one phone is supported for now, the WIN43T to be released at the end of April. 2 view angles will be available, eye line and bird view. The service will keep its current price between 95� a day and 315� a month. The funky views will only be available to lucky Tokyo strollers.
Look at the pics!!

[via]

Comments [0]

January 19, 2006

Viewed 1310 times

| keitai | mobile | UI |

Loading Retweet

Scroll wheels, discs, pads and cylinders

Updated [MP3 Insider] Synaptics wasn't offering its technology to any other MP3 player companies until recently, and it still doesn't offer the round version found on the iPod to anyone but Apple. However, as mentioned above, the company made a straightened-out version of it for Creative's Zen Touch, which evidently doesn't violate whatever agreement Synaptics has with Apple. It makes a bit more sense conceptually, since song lists run up and down instead of in circles, but the scrollwheel lets you scroll faster, because your finger can go around continuously instead of returning to the top of the strip. To make the Zen Touch even more competitive with the iPod, I recommended to Creative that it implement a new feature that would scroll down one screen.

Limiting my scope of discussion to navigation wheels and pads (& co.) found on MP3 players, I have to admit that neither the iPod wheel (a disc really), nor the Zen's pad feel really practical to use.

In general, I like:
+ buttons you don't have to press hard on to click (but touch-sensitive buttons don't always work... therefore I don't trust them and am forced to double check my actions on the screen, which is counter-productive etc...),
+ an interface that very obviously links the movement of your fingers with the direction of your input (rotating a disc to scroll vertically in the iPod is irritating),
+ a physical input interfrace like the disc of the first generation iPod that was actually rotating under your fingers. Give me more of that!

For those reasons, my favourite input interface for an MP3 player would be closer to the Sony scroll wheel (cylinder really), like the one found on my mobile phone:
+ it's small, yet allows for efficient and fast scrolling,
+ it mimics the direction of the scrolling interface,
+ gives discreet step-effect feedback to the finger.

However, the buttons they added on the sides for Next and Back are too small for my big fingers and too hard to press (in contrast, the wheel has to be caressed, and pressing on the side buttons makes me press on the wheel too).
For the side actions, I would re-use the Microsoft's tilt wheel mechanism as:
+ it allows for minimum-effort panning forward or back in the interface.
+ your finger move in the direction of your navigation in the interface instead of clicking down to move right and clicking down to move left too...

Integrating some of this essence in the Sony scroll cylinder to make it perfect for me, I would:
+ double its length, merely using the space previously taken by the side buttons
+ give it touchpad-like properties that would allow me to rub my thumb left and right along its length to navigate back and forth in the interface.

Update
Now, what I found out while playing Bomberman on my phone is that, no matter how practical for surfing the net it is, the scrollwheel is unusable for gaming. You have no way to precisely control your up and down input and it is likely you'll go up 2 blocks instead of one and step in the field of the bomb etc...

So that kills any of my theories above... and that killed the scrollwheel on the Sony phones (sometimes in mid 2005) who gave "gaming" as their official reason for phasing it out in favour of the ubiquitous Xpad with center button (it was also making phones too thick and letting too much dust inside the phone leading to more breakdowns - I heard from insiders).
Probably feeling a little bad for this awkward move (aren't Sony totally marketing their phones as music players and not consoles though, in Japan!!?), Sony now offers "page scrolling" buttons on the side of their phones, but reaching for those buttons after having clicked the center pad button requires moving your thumb to a totally different place on the phone which actually requires you to modify your handling of the phone all together, and therefore, I never use those buttons... Duh!!
Or they could have just made a tiny scroll wheel to fit in the space of the Xpad center button. but they didn't and I found something else...

Enter the Jog Ball.
Have you seen some of the super thin D-Snap Panasonic digital cameras... they had, in place of a dial or Xpad, a ball. a super tiny 10mm diameter ball that you could also click (same as on some of those huge mouse/joystick combos...).

Now, imagine replacing the center button of any mobile phone Xpad with a ball that can scroll in any direction and be clicked...
You'd keep the clicking, you'd keep the super fast scroll (which is a pain in the ass on ALL phones) and you'd keep the Xpad for gaming and usual tasks. You could think up a hundred new cool games around the new inputs. You could use the jog ball as a precise mouse cursor...
Hear me!!?

First published on 2005-01-28

Comments [0]

January 15, 2006

Viewed 963 times

| UI | wow |

Loading Retweet

Cover Flow

The last time I bought an actual CD was 4 years ago, so the only contact with my music collection for 4 years has been lists and lists and lists of titles... Lost the emotions of handling your own CDs, broken covers, and gaze at their covers. When is the last time you had a discussion with a friend about a great CD cover art.
For me, music is a line on a P2P soft, or on the iTunes store, then a line on iTunes and then sound.
Imagine if the time continuum warped and all the people who ever designed a CD jacket disappeared in a sneeze... We wouldn't be left with much.

Cover Flow is a new software that brings back physicality to your CD collection in an overwhelming, submersive 3D interface.

The software presents your music collections as standing CD covers you can flip through sideways. It's simply beautiful with its black background and reflections, intuitive. Magical.
(more on the original concept)

Of course I spent hours making sure that every single album I have would get its original cover. The app automatically does most of the work for you but some older or badly indexed albums do get left out. The app then allows you to quickly search for artwork on Amazon or Google and import the found artwork in a simple Drag & Drop gesture.

Anyway, enough talking, just go download it immediately! (thanks Olivier!)

Things I am waiting for in a future release:
- a way to represent incomplete albums and even single tracks as opposed to full albums.
- full screen browsing
- more browsing options such as genres, star level sorting...
- song list display somewhere (back of the CD?) so I can actually choose another song in the album without going into iTunes.
- better app icon
- last but not least: a way to import all the album artwork (that I spent hours downloading) BACK into iTunes...

Now. How long before this interface gets borrowed by Apple and included in the next version of FrontRow?

Comments [0]

April 12, 2005

Viewed 911 times

| UI | wow |

Loading Retweet

Bosch's crazy infolight

[Bosch] The Integra Vision dishwasher is so quiet, we had to create INFOLIGHT, a device that beams a small light onto the floor so you can tell it's running.[Via]

Was this really the only way to let us know that it is running or not? I refuse to believe this. I understand the need and also the limitation considering that they like to keep their doors free of any buttons or indicators but the solution is way too stretched. A light embedded in the handle, making it discreetly glow or reflecting on the door just seems a more logical way to do that since this is where the action happens when you open a dishwasher.
How weird!!? Can't really get excited for that one...

Comments [0]

Tags