Rui CarmoUpdate: Fast forward a year and four months later, and even S60 fans are griping about lack of consistency. Competition is good – it makes you realize your favorite platform isn’t perfect. Still, the annoying thing for me is that although this piece is routinely linked to from Nokia sites, there hasn’t been much practical improvement in a year’s time (my phone of the year for 2008, the E71, still exhibits most of the same failings).
So, all that mulling about the Series 60 and the daily use of a new 3rd Edition model has finally driven me to write about Nokia and what I think they should do.
The interesting thing about this article is that I could just as well write mostly the same regarding SonyEricsson (with an extra twist due to their Walkman co-branded handsets), but never about Motorola (who clearly doesn’t hold a candle to either) or some of the others.
What can they do about the iPhone, then? Well, quite honestly, they most likely can’t beat the hype surrounding it. But they can improve what they have to a good degree, and maybe even (just maybe) come out in front again.
To the Mac zealots currently scampering around the surrounding underbrush preparing to call me a traitor for dissing the iPhone – I use a Mac because it’s the best UNIX environment on the planet, not because it’s from Apple. Read the About pages and stop sniping.
1. The Series 60 UI is Horrendously Complex
I’ve been known to rant about this in the past, but I don’t think mere words suffice anymore. And even if pictures are worth a thousand words, I just don’t think pictures are enough here too.
So I did a little usability exercise: I mapped out the menu tree from a current Series 60 3rd Edition phone, and came up with this mindmap: