Sony Ericsson / Sony : Symbian phones : (P990i) Flip removed and hardware buttons - rant / wishlist.
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> (P990i) Flip removed and hardware buttons - rant / wishlist.
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Hi everybody!
I've been the happy owner of a P990i for a week now, coming from my loyal and trusted P900.
I decided to post this because, on the one hand, I'd like to share this thoughts with other P990i owners and get feedback about it, and on the other hand, I secretly hope SE people (and 3rd party developers, for that matter) read this and come up with brilliant solutions!
First of all, I don't know anything about the technical aspects of symbian or UIQ3. This is purely an end user assessment of usability. It's probable that I will say somethings that will sound as nonsense to people who know the inside workings of the phone...
Second, I will only speak about the phone with the flip removed, but I guess some of this would apply to phone with flip. (on a side note, I used my P900 for almost 3 years WITH flip, and now I decided to try the alternative... not bad at all!).
So, on with the ranting and wishing...
To sum it up: why can't we customize the hardware buttons more?! And I mean MUCH more!?
For a start, the ones that CAN be customized (MULTIMEDIA and NET) should have more options in doing so.
And what about the other ones?
The BACK button becomes useless when you reach the standby screen (there's no "going back" no more...), so you should be able to assign some function to it in that situation (launch application, call voicemail, turn on speakerphone, etc, etc).
The CAMERA button is a waste of effort because you still have to open the lens cover to use it as the camera shutter button, so why not be able to assign some other function to it when the camera app is NOT LOADED!?
Even the QWERTY keyboard is under-used when not in a text input situation... OK, most keys will summon Contacts when held down, and SPACE will summon Phone, but there so many other wasted keys there!
Of course, the ideal situation would be the possibility to customize the hardware buttons on an application basis... All applications... And if not all, at least for some major functions this should be possible (meaning: all buttons would have some function when the Phone app was on, and then another set of functions when in MediaPlayer, and another in Camera, for instance...).
Heck, I would welcome ANY improvment in the customizability of the hardware buttons in flip removed mode... The difference in usability would be enormous! And mind you, I'm a guy who really likes using the stylus, hence the flip removed...
Oh well, I guess that's it... I think that either SE or some 3rd party developer could/should look into this. I remember in my P900 I had a very nice app called KeyMapper that addressed this same issue.
What do you guys think? Any other ideas?
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Posted: 2006-09-10 12:54:17
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