This is a surreal moment in the world of digital devices.
Until today, cellular phones as a whole have been among the worst designed pieces of equipment ever made. The culture amongst phone companies was one that rewarded impressive-sounding features and sexy enclosures, not ease of use and life-altering applications. Phones are a pain in the ass.
That’s why the Apple iPhone has been so highly anticipated. Everyone knew Apple was going to do it right.
And they did. Today Apple announced their first cell phone. I don’t need to gush about all the great design points, because their web site does a wonderful job of that. I’ll just point out one detail, hidden deep in their pages:
The [iPhone's] proximity sensor detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away.
There are a lot of things in the iPhone that we talked about at IU in Design Club: easy access to the address book, touch screen interaction with minimum “clicking”, and so-on. But I’m not sure I ever would’ve thought of a proximity sensor for this purpose. It’s just great thinking on Apple’s part.
The surreal part of this is that it’s something I’ve known was going to happen for a long time. Not the Apple phone specifically, but that someone was going to sit down and actually design a phone that was made to be used by human beings. And it’s been years and years, and no one–not Nokia, not Samsung, not Motorola–stepped up to the plate. I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen.
And now it has. Crazy.
Looked over the specs and it looks pretty good.
On a more critical note, I see a few small problems that I might have with it:
- How well does the touch-screen work while wearing gloves? (a design element somewhat easier to overlook if you’re living in California)
- Was the camera really necessary? (It does seem like a nice feature, but I would imagine that I’m not the only one out there working at a company with pretty strict bans on cameras.)