For anyone who just wants to quickly pop open a game on the tube – too bad. The games section, titled Xbox Live, is obviously designed to be integrated with future online services and the Xbox video game console. This is incredibly frustrating, especially when you are trying to access functions in the phone quickly. Similarly, when page ‘flicking’ through the menus, the phone regularly misconstrues this as pressing an icon on the screen – opening wrong windows and programs. Buttons don’t have clear visual borders or separations, so opening the wrong item is a regular occurrence. Beyond the elegant front menus, there is so much crammed on every back end or app screen that it becomes less than user friendly, and quite messy. The OS feels like it’s trying to do too much, and not letting the interface breathe. Unfortunately, once you get into the backend and into various apps and add-ons, it’s easy to see that the design ethos overruled practicality and functionality concerns. It definitely feels like a high end design team has been hard at work. Rather than flicking through pages of small icons, Mango runs up and down and utilises larger, brighter and fully customisable tiles – I actually found it easier to grab what I wanted, quicker. The start screen, consisting of large, colourful and ‘live’ tiles is an attention grabber and once users get the hang of it, extremely satisfying and fun to use. No other smartphone interface jumps out and grabs your attention quite like Mango’s beautiful Metro does. With an iPhone, for example, you always know your single power button is on the top of the phone. Stacking all the buttons on one side of the phone doesn’t feel like a good decision. By touch, particularly in the dark, it is tricky to feel your way around this phone to find which way is up, or which button is which.
They are all ever so slightly raised, with the power button beside the volume. One is your on-off/lock button, the other near the bottom of the unit is for the camera (but is customisable). There are three buttons down the right hand side of the phone (including the volume -/+). The charger/USB plug is also fiddly, requiring a bit of wiggle to get it charging. It feels extremely fragile and I see it breaking. Nokia’s beautiful design is let down a bit by a somewhat rudimentary flip top flap which accesses the USB cable/charger. View all newsletters Sign up to our newsletters Data, insights and analysis delivered to you By The Tech Monitor team Sign up here
0 kommentar(er)
