On mobile phones

1. A couple of months back I was talking about the iPod touch, and how I wanted one, and how I didn’t want an iPhone. I now have an iPod touch, and I’ve been using it for the last couple of weeks, and what do I think? Well, Iku thinks it’s my new girlfriend, that’s how much I’ve been using it.

2. The interface is far better than I had expected, it’s just magic. Well, 90% of the time. The other 10%? That’ll be the times when you want to change the volume one handed, or whilst walking, or trying to scrub ahead in a podcast or video. Those slider bars are insanely hard to use unless you use both hands, and are wildly inaccurate — I’ve accidentally blasted myself a few times already. But wait — why is that stuff only 10% of your time? It’s a media player, shouldn’t that account for more?

3. Well, yes. If it didn’t also have WiFi and a web browser.

4. Honestly, the touch has become my main internet device, something I can use pretty much anywhere (who knew there were so many WiFi access points in this city?) Safari works wonderfully, the “flick” method of scrolling feels so much more organic than using a mouse and a scroll bar. The whole device has a lovely heft to it, and it balances well in one hand, so I can pretty much read the morning news on the touch in my left hand, using my left thumb to scroll and click on links. And, just as importantly, the internet looks good on the touch. Compare the New York Times mobile site on my touch, compared to my Nokia N73:

0711_ipod_comp1.jpg0711_ipod_comp2.jpg

5. Which one would you rather use?

6. The font on my N73 is perfectly legible, if a bit small. But the font rendering is fantastic on the touch, and it raises the legibility of mobile devices to the point where I would actually prefer it to the computer. Look again at those photos, a single column of text is about the same size (perhaps a bit bigger) as a column of text in a newspaper. There are about five to seven words per line, so it’s easy to follow from line to line — unlike blocks of text on computer screens where you could, depending on the width of your screen, have twenty to thirty words per line. Having too many words per line makes it more difficult to find the next line in the text. Just think, how many times have you gotten lost in a passage because of this?

7. What has this to do with the iPhone? I was adamant about not getting one because I didn’t want to get locked in to a carrier, I hated that Apple makes this amazing platform but shuts it off to developers. But using the touch just brings home just how much better it is than my Nokia, which is a pretty sweet phone as it is. But there’s no comparison, despite the very many failings of the iPhone, for 90% of what it does, it does it waaaay better than the competition.

8. And I’d rather have a great user experience 90% of the time, than having a passable experience 100% of the time.

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