A1000blog

Dialup interrupts

Today my dialup was interrupted twice in a row. On both occations I initiated the call with a voice command. In the middle of the dial, when the connection was established and I waited for an answer, an incoming call caused the phone to ask "busy/answer"? I clicked busy and everything was disconnected. The A1000 fell back to the phone app's keypad. Somewhat annoyed I voiced again. On this second attempt the abort was caused by an incoming SMS It came from the voice mail system notifying me about a message from the person I tried to call who asked if I had tried to call him).

Funny? Nope!

Name, but no number

Whenever I make a call, or look into the phone application's history (dialled/missed/answered) the phone displays just the name of the contact. Excuse me, most of my contacts have at least three numbers!

As far as I can rembember my previous phones somehow managed this better. Didn´t think of that, until the number was gone. Now I'm frequently annoyed because of this. I realize it is a tricky thing to design this feature on a small screen. Maybe alternating name/number would do the trick.

Can't send xMS from contacts

I wish it was possible to send SMS/MMS from the contact book. No big deal, but it would be nice. E-mails though, can be sent by clicking the address.

(For some reason the list of contacts look different, and has different information, in the contact book compared to when accessed through the messaging application, i.e. when "To:" is clicked in the latter.)

Disruptive calls

I was happily listening to music and writing the previous post when the A1000 rang. Away went the music, my e-mail was thrown into the draft folder, and the call tune started to play out load - not in my headset (why! o why?)

After the call I had to manually restart the music player, the messge app, and open up the draft mail.

Stupid Symbian!

Sync weaknesses

Whereas syncing my contacts with Outlolk works smoothly, I'm annoyed that notes are not included in the sync. Another thing I really miss is that recurring events, such as birthdays, are not included. Beats me why.

Calls kills the music

I was just enjoying Telstars (an old Swedish popjazz group) when the chairman of Web Service Award (www.webserviceaward.com) called me to discuss this years awards event.

My headset went silent and instead the call tune started playing in my pocket (sic). When I hung up after the call, the music remained off. Annoying being forced to pick up the phone, turn off the screen lock, clicking three times, switch on the lock again, and slide the phone back into the pocket just to get the music back.

Screen locked when calling

(This is the first post I'm sending in from the A1000) During calls the screen initially locks, i.e. a soft lock independent of the locking switch on the side of the phone. So, it's an extra, and annoying, step to touch the unlock button before I'm able to take notes, navigate voice messages, etc.

Undesigned navigation key

As most newer phones the A1000 has a navigation key/joypad. This one really sucks. It is slippery, it has a non-distinctive haptic feedback and it "selects" too easily (i.e. clicks instead of taking directions).

By "design" I referr to an academic meaning of the term which encompasses ergonomy, functionalty, aesthetics as well as a process rather than a result (see for example my former boss Lisbeth Svengren Holms publications). It seems that the technicians at Motorola never used their own joypad, less took in user feedback - hence ended up with a bad design (result).

The other day I ran into an a fix that might interest the Motopeople. Nickname machmandp describes in Aussie3G's forum how he has taken care of the problem. In short: he taped a piece from a swimming cap on his joypad (full story here).

Complicated calling

With respect to my previous post (that I like the A1000) all the annoying things I will bring up here might cause you to think that I am schizophrenic. But the point is that the good things outweigh the bad stuff (i.e. room for improvements :-)

Calling by manually entering the number by touching the virtual keys is easy. Before I got the A1000 I wasn't´t sure if it was possible to tap the screen with my fingers or if I was forced to use the stylus, but the finger tapping works well. The thing is, who dials manually these days?

With my previous phones I really appreciated the possibility to assign numbers to keys for speed dialing. That is, by holding down one key (e.g. "4") I could easily call a number (I had "4" assigned to my "H"ome number). That meant I was able to call about 9 different people without even taking the phone out of my pocket. The A1000 does not have that functionality. And if it had, it would be impossible to use because it is tricky to navigate on a touchscreen without seeing it.

Even better was voice dialling (i.e. by assigning voice tags to contacts). On the SonyEricsson T68 I could call a voice tagged number by pressing the hands free button for a second and speaking the tag (e.g. "Anders") after the beep. Whereas the A1000 have voice tags, the implementation needs improvement. Voice dialling is initiated by "press and release the speakerphone key, then say the recorded voice tag within two seconds" (quote from the manual). Because the "speakerkey" is located on the side of the phone, that means I have to get in touch with the phone even though I am using handsfree. If the phone's screen lock is on it complicates it even more as you have to unlock first. Furthermore, fat chance you manage to speak when the phone is ready. As a result you need to see the phone when you do voice dialling - annoying.

Of course you can dial numbers by looking up contacts and selecting the appropriate number entry. Without going into detailed explanations here, it suffice to say that this way of dialling is complicated on the A1000. Perhaps I will be better at it after some training. But for the moment, I regularly dial the wrong number - sometimes even the wrong contact!

Maybe some software fixes can makes dialling better, but I believe the hardware needs to be changed as well. In particular the "Navigation key"...

Delay when opening Transflash

My laptop (Toshiba Portégé 4000) has a built-in slot for SD (Secure Digital) flash memories. The TransFlash card I bought included an SD adapter. For some reason there seems to be a slight delay (about 5-10 seconds) before Windows reacts to folders and files in the TransFlash card. The first time I used the SD-adapter I thought it did not work. Nowadays I´m used to wait a little.