Saturday, July 30, 2011

Android usability

I've been using an HTC Incredible for about 9 months now and I really like having a smartphone.
However, it's not smart enough...
Take for instance the search dialog in Market, you have a text box, keyboard, and search history.  Let's say you search for some term, view the results and realize that you need to refine the search terms.  Guess what?  You get to type it all in again!  There is no long press to copy/paste prior search terms into the text box for further editing!  Oh I get it.  Google engineers always know exactly what they need to enter in the text box before they do the search.. :)

The second area of usability problem is in the voice dial features.  When I want to use voice, I need to use sound to communicate with my phone - bidirectionally!  If I'm walking my dog Sophia and want to make a phone call, I quickly realize that I cannot see the screen because it's daylight so I can't even find and tap on the Voice Dial icon.  Even if I can see that, it displays a results dialog that I have to read and tap on to use.  What I want is this:

Double tap the power button, android says "ready".
I say "voice dial", android says "ready".
I say "call home", android says "call 0026?".
I say "go" (or "okay" or "yes") and android places the call.
If 0026 is not the last 4 digits of the number I want to call, I say "Next" and android presents the next search result...

Now that would be a usable voice dial feature!

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