Spencer Kelly of BBC News has a good write-up on current and future interfaces for mobile devices.  Apparently as many as 25% of mobile phones are returned for being faulty – despite the fact that they work properly!  Kelly covers different types of user interfaces, including the Apple scroll wheel, various keypad designs, and even virtual keypads and motion sensors.

Are phones these days really that difficult to use?  I believe that part of the Treo’s success is because it’s based on Palm OS, which is tried and tested for over a decade.  Palm has done a good job of enhancing the user interface for one-handed navigation.  I find  the Treo very easy to use, but that could be mainly because I’m fairly familiar with the OS.  However, the Palm OS is showing its age, especially when compared to platforms such as Symbian (which itself is an evolution of a PDA-based operating system, ie Psion EPOC).

Palm definitely needs to make a decision now on the direction of its software – especially since Palm OS 6.0 (Cobalt) is no more, and the new Linux-based OS from Palmsource (ALP – Access Linux Platform) won’t be ready for deployment for a while yet.

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Filed under: Mobile Software

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