Friday August 03, 2007

The real iPhone nasty.

Or why I now use two phones.

So what is the real nasty on the iPhone?

The real nasty is call management. It just plain sucks. I don't mean the dialer user interface. I mean the interactions between the rest of the system while you are on a call.

Case in point: I am on a call, rolling my computer bag behind me, heading to my office. A modal dialg appears telling me I have a text message. Do I ignore or view? I try to hit ignore with one hand and get view instead. Argh! The beast puts the call into the "background" and takes me to text messaging. Puts this annoyingly small green bar at the top which is impossible to hit one-handed.

After several tries, I finally get back to the phone dialer so I can end the call. The person I am talking to is a business person from another company who is wondering what the heck I am doing. Sigh.

Case in point 2: I am making a call. I am in a moving car. The person isn't answering. Apparently the neighborhood has folks with wireless. Very common in Silicon Valley.

The person is not answering. The phone pops up a MODAL dialog. Wanna join doohicky-wifi? I am trying to end the call before it goes to the person's voicemail. ARGH! Go away. I make the first dialog go away and before I can press End Call, I get another modal wifi dialog showing me even more wifi networks I can join. And it won't let me end the call!

I press cancel thinking now it will go away and I can end the call. Nope. A THIRD modal dialog comes up. Telling me I can turn off wifi from settings. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! JUST LET ME END THE BLOODY CALL!!!!

I have taken to using two cell phones. The other one understands that a phone is primarily about making and receiving calls and does not interfere with that task.

[evil laugh]

( Aug 03 2007, 08:23:52 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]