Holiday Gift Guide »

Who is going to be the first to wow me with a mobile phone UI?

Categories: Ideas and rants
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 4:15 AM

I just came home (04:06) from a New Year’s Day Party which was quite revealing. We had a Nintendo Wii with one controller being shared amongst 4 players, in between turns people of course would play with their mobile phones. Entire conversations were being started when everyone was showing off pictures they took or newly acquired ring tones. I got a chance to play with a relatively new Samsung slider phone, a Windows Mobile candy bar style device, and an LG Chocolate.

Each device had a completely different operating system, and user experience, but none have made me go "whoa that’s awesome!" My Nokia E61 doesn’t even make me go "whoa!"

Moviecube_400x250
So what is this "whoa" factor? All you have to do is look at Windows Vista, Mac OS X, and more recently Beryl for Linux. The subtle fade ins and outs, 3D effects, audio queues, and innovate ways to manipulate windows and media, these are all things that make my experience richer and make me go "whoa!" To this day I can vividly remember the first time I played with OS X and saw that crazy dock and expose, Windows Vista with its subtle bling, and finally got Beryl to run that famed cube desktop manager on my Ubuntu box.

So while yes Nokia is making phones with powerful 3D graphics engines for the sake of the next generation N-Gage platform, what are they doing to harness this power to make my interface experience a memorable and visually striking one?

Goodnight for me, and enjoy your lunch (12:06) Finland!

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.