> > - more contact details > > Such as? I didn't want to make it too complicated here. Phone, E-mail > and Address and Company seemed the most likely used fields to me.
Don't even try to predict which ones are necessary: it should be up to the user to define them. When you select Add Field... a dialog or screen could pop up with combo-boxes for field name (with choices like Address, Phone, Email, or write your own), context (work, home, mobile, or write your own), and a multi-line text field (with at least 3 lines visible) for the value. The extremely important thing is that the user should be able to add new types of fields which have not been imagined before. For example, one of my friends lives in a gated community. He gave me a number I have to type in on a keypad at the gate, to open it. When I am at the gate, I have my phone, so my phone is the best place to remember that number. (Otherwise what would you suggest? A sticky note in the car somewhere? I actually did that for a while, but how gross is that?!?) Now where in a conventional contacts list do I put this information? No designer of a phone contacts list would ever think of it, nor should he be expected to. My A1200's contacts form has a "note" field, so I put it there; but that is sub-optimal because I had to write "gate code:" as part of the note, to remind myself of what it was; and the name of the field properly is not "note" it is "gate code". And what if I want to write more than one "note"? But they didn't give me the ability to add the "gate code" field, nor to add more than one "note". Meanwhile they cluttered up the screen with lots of fields that I don't normally use, which are just left empty, and take up space anyway. I hate that! In your "keep it simple" list you have included two fields which I do not normally use: address and company. (I can remember my friends' companies, and I can remember how to drive to their houses, too, and there is no application to address an envelope from the phone, or something like that. If there were such a thing, or I was a navigation-challenged person and needed to link addresses to maps, then I would use it more.) Why at least 3 lines of text? That way "address" can be unstructured: who knows about all the address conventions world-wide? and the whole thing is used together anyway, so there is no point in having separate fields for number, street, apartment, city, state, zip etc. Another example would be all the chat systems: IRC server and channel, ICQ number, Jabber server and ID, AIM ID, etc. etc... (and let's include even geekier ones like ytalk [EMAIL PROTECTED], finger [EMAIL PROTECTED], Zephyr etc.) and for a while there, new chat systems were being invented way too often, so you might as well forget about anticipating this need. You should be able to add IDs like those to a contacts list! Then if somebody has the itch, he might develop an app to actually use a particular kind of chat system over GPRS; or even if not, it's nice to be able to use the phone as your memory of such IDs. Anyway, you should be able to type a new field type directly into the combo box, or hit the down-arrow button to pop down the list of pre-existing field types. And every time you enter a new field type, it should be added to the list. The list can be sorted by most-frequently-used so you don't usually have to scroll it. This imposes a requirement on the data store for contacts: it can be tree-structured (like XML) or it can be a fully-normalized relational schema, but it cannot be one-row-per-contact, because you cannot have enough fields for all the possibilities. (What I mean by fully-normalized is: you need at least two tables, one that maps contact names to contact IDs, and another that has contactID, fieldName, fieldContext, fieldValue.) Note that this design does not preclude having a few empty fields by default when you add a new contact. Since this is a phone, "mobile phone" is the most logical, and "personal email" may be second. I don't see any reason for more than that (you can always "Add Field..." to get more, and it's good to limit the amount of clutter on the screen, by default, so that scrolling is seldom necessary.) > Personally, I can't really see how this makes sense in a contacts > application. Keeping it simple as possible was my main goal. The simplest possible design is the one that lets you add fields one-at-a-time to each contact, without trying to predict what fields the user will want. There is no field-specific code: all fields are equal, and you write the code to edit them and to display them just once. It's on the same principle as an index card or a rolodex card in the last-century world: just a blank space onto which you can write whatever information you like. At least, organizing the info as name-value pairs (rather than one big block of plain text) makes it possible to sort or query by field. When displaying a contact (as opposed to editing) it should be possible to touch any phone number and enter it into the dialer (ready to hit "dial" and place the call), or touch any email and compose a new one to that person, or touch any address and get a map, or touch any instant-messaging/IRC/whatever field and open a chat session of the appropriate kind. But some of those are harder to achieve than others, and the important thing for now is just to be able to enter those types of fields. > > Isn't the power button enough for quitting running apps? I wouldn't add > > anything to the app list - to fiddely. KISS... > > I think there is plenty of space for a close button "X" to the right. > The problem with using the power button is that it is completely > unobvious to new users. Not to mention it's not particularly easy to > use. I agree. Using the power button for this is not a good idea at all. If it had a big red button on the face (like many phones) then it would make sense, but this phone's power button does not look like it's meant to be used that way. (recessed, on the side, too small) > > > * Remove communication history page(?) > > > > So far everyone told me that this is a cool feature missing on all other > > phones. I love it ;-) > > Interesting, I guess I rarely look at my call history anyway. You can't > do any thing with it, so I don't really see what it's usefulness is. On my A1200 I use it a lot, mostly for calling back numbers in my "missed calls" list. It's also nice to be able to redial a previous number from the dialed calls list. I think of it as a short-term memory for contacts: I may not want to store someone's number permanently in the phonebook (long-term memory), but may need to play phone tag with a person for a day or two, until the business at hand is finished. So if this list currently has no features, it needs to at least have a dial function (as with contacts: touch the number to enter it into the dialer). > I find the hardware buttons on the Neo fairly difficult to use because > of the placement on the case and also the quality of the micro switches. Yeah one wonders if they will wear out if you press them too much.
