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Posts tagged with "Treo"

Guerilla Usability: Treo Holster

By Eddie Lopez. Friday, 8. September 2006, 13:20:22

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Here's an amusing story I ran across about Treo holsters and what I like to call "guerilla usability." (Another example of guerilla usability is the post-it note post)

(reproduced with permission from author, emphasis is mine)

Originally posted by Carl Bechtold:

I don’t like gadgets, so I insist I should only have to carry one, and that one has to do everything. So a couple of years ago I bought a Treo 600. It did the PDA thing, and the cell phone, MP3 layer, audio books, etc. Of course, to accommodate all of that I bought the largest SD card I could find and a leather holster.

I soon discovered the SD card extends just a wee bit outside the body of the Treo and, as you know, the way to extract such a chip is to depress it. So, when one takes the Treo out of the holster, the chip drags on the leather, and shoots itself out onto the floor. I threw the holster away in favor of some sticky rubber stuff that lets me carry the phone safely in my pocket.

I soon discovered my cell service was nearly useless because of a Cingular signal vs. Treo conflict, so I had to upgrade to a 650. I thought surely they had fixed that glitch by then, but it was, if anything, worse. Ironically, I now become the tech envy of the shop – Irony because, as you will recall, I hate gadgets.

Soon, Tom, my boss, shows up with a sparkling new Verizon Windows Treo in a sexy new snap-in belt holster. We’re together on a plane to Seattle and he’s showing me all the stuff he has loaded on the phone and I warned him about the escaping memory card thing. Sure enough, about a half hour into the flight, he’s showing the phone to the guy across the isle and discovers his memory card is missing. He stands up, brushes his clothing, checks in his pants cuffs, pulls up the seat cushion, and interrogates the lady in the seat behind. It can’t be found.
A can of pop and bag of pretzels later, the lady on the window seat across the isle is cleaning up and says “What’s this?” Nope, it’s not a soda cracker. It’s Tom’s SD card.
I smile with my best “Told you so,” grin. Tom reassembles his weapon, holsters it, draws, and the Treo fires. The chip went about three feet into the air, bounced off the opposite side of the plane and back onto the floor.

The last time I saw Tom’s Treo, he still had the sexy little holster, but he had a piece of black electrical tape over the SD chip. Imagine that. A $500 gadget phone with (supposedly) hundreds of thousands of dollars of engineering research behind it, being made usable by a penny’s worth of black tape.

We have to have some fun with this. I’m suggesting we should have a Treo Tiddlywinks Championship. Chip Wars, to see who can shoot their SD cards the farthest.
Draw, Pardner!

Carl


For what it's worth, Shell's company works with lots of Treos and varying types of holsters (a pretty large sampling) and has never seen this problem with the memory cards, but don't let that take away from the story.

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Dueling Treos: 650 vs 700w

By Eddie Lopez. Tuesday, 23. May 2006, 22:14:52

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After those last words from Shell (Activity Centered vs. Feature Rich), I got a series of emails from her with more and more information in regards to usability quirks and nuances. It rapidly started turning into a new post -so she decided to put to paper to pen on a comparison of the Treo 650 and 700w. She's passionate about the Treo brand, so I thought we'd give her some room to speak her mind...

by Shell-


I started off with the Treo 650 in mid-2005 and worshipped the phone from the start. When the 700w was released, I was hesitant to use it because I have a bias against all things Windows. However, I decided to give it a shot a few weeks ago. I'll admit, the multimedia capabilities on the 700w are amazing - but I'll save that for later. For now, the following are a few things I've noticed regarding the differences between the Treo 650 and the Treo 700w.

The keypad buttons are actually better on the Treo 700w. They're more squared off, making it easier for those with big thumbs to hit the proper key (which makes male users in particular quite happy). However, two of the previous shortcut buttons on the 650 are now missing from the 700w. It's not as if those buttons were taking up too much space on the 650, so what was the reasoning behind the change? The shortcuts buttons on the 650 made it easier to get to your email, calendar, drop down list, or Today screen with one push. On the 700w, you now have to hit at least two buttons to get to anything besides the phone application. Instead of one shortcut button, all of the 700w's programs are bundled under the nifty little Windows-logo'ed key. Perhaps this was just a ploy to bury the Windows logo even further into our subconscious, but it's a pain when you want to see your email or contacts quickly.


The web browser on the 700w provides, overall, a better web browsing experience. Faster loading, better graphics, a screen that is easy on the eyes. However, the lack of easy-to-navigate screen softkeys on the 700w is irritating (Eddie's note: I tried to get Opera Mini and/or Mobile on her Treo(s) before but can't remember offhand what roadblocks prevented me from being successful). Notice how the 650's browser, Blazer, has back and forward screen softkeys and a Home Page softkey? These are the simplest to recognize - even an internet rookie can figure those ones out. The folder-looking key is for optimizing web pages (okay, that one is not an obvious icon - not to me anyway), the globe spins when pages are being accessed, and the folder-list looking icon is where Favorites are stored. Easy enough. But on the 700w, where are all my easily-accessible shortcuts? The top bar here is dedicated to a phone/mail shortcut which will inform you if you've missed any calls or email while you were browsing the web - even though you will still be notified of any incoming phone calls or emails received while browsing the web. So what is the point of this icon? Moving on: the EV icon will tell you which network you're connected to. You can click on and choose the settings for your network. I consider myself a typical user - I don't get into networks like that. The signal strength bars are fine, I suppose, and lastly there's an icon showing your battery life, an icon that you canNOT click on. (Sidenote: this is one of the most irritating features of the 700w. On the 650, you can tap the battery icon and it will tell you how much life you have left. But on the 700w, tapping the battery does absolutely nothing. I still can't figure out where to find the amount of life left).


The Today screen is basically the home page on the 700w, where you can dial a number, look at your latest email or check your calendar (the settings on the phone pictured have those options removed - I don't like clutter on my main screen). But whether or not you like clutter, this layout isn't too terribly shabby. A quick hit of the Menu button will take you to your Contacts, Dial Pad, Call Log, etc. However, meandering on over to the 650 - I can get to Contacts with one keystroke instead of two. Same with Call Log. And hey, there's a shortcut to my Mom's number right there on the front screen too. While I think each layout has its benefits, I'm sticking with 650 here because it lets me go places with one tap versus two.

And speaking of taps - the 700w can be a pain for navigation. With the 650, I can use my finger to tap the screen for almost every single thing I want. However, on the 700w I find myself trying in vain to use my finger to tap the screen and hitting the wrong link every time - I have to eventually pull out my stylus. What happens when I lose my stylus? Because eventually I will. I think this difficulty in being able to hit the mark with my finger is owed to the size of the marks. In trying to cram so many options into one space, they've made everything so small that you're forced to use the stylus and personally, I hate stylus'.

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Activity Centered vs. Feature Rich

By Eddie Lopez. Tuesday, 23. May 2006, 14:31:06

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Updated:based on the timeliness of her followup- I've just updated this post with her comments. Sorry if you're re-reading
Update 2 ok- sorry some of this is off-topic. We're actually working on a related/expanded post now that is basically a comparision of the two phones mentioned below.

Reader Shell writes...

"I mean, it just seems like they're mixing up the business and fun side of a phone just because they CAN."


...referring to the Treo 700w while discussing the difference between the Palm based Treo 650 vs the Windows based 700w. She further says:

650 is for business-folk, no frills no thrills, just a high level of functionality and ease-of-use- whereas the 700 is a multimedia toy, perfect for people who like a colorful screen and lots of various capabilities that they'll NEVER use.



On Syncing (note- this is likely going to be a different post after we can get a good, strong feeling about Windows Exchange server)-
She's mentioned sync problems with the 700w that don't provide a lot of realibility that you'll get your messages in a timely manner. She goes on to say that "the treo 650 connects with the "Goodlink" server and there's NO LAG whatsoever in receiving Outlook email through it - in fact, emails come to our phones BEFORE they hit even our inbox. The 700 uses Windows Exchange server...it doesn't sync up properly and you can delete an email from the phone but it doesn't delete from Outlook for like 10 minutes. 10 minute delays are unacceptable in the business world."

On Activity Centered Design-
I believe the point she was making with me is that the 700w has less thought put into the "activity centered" approach but focuses instead on having as many features as it can hold with little thought put into how they all relate and support each other...although they are nice features. MS Office at your fingertips. I guess. She points out that anyone spending 600 dollars on a smart phone likely has better devices nearby to work on MS Office documents....and further, the 650 already fits the bill with "Documents-To-Go" that is Office compatible- but they are an add on if you really need them- leaving them out of the equation since that's probably not the intended activities you're going to want to use this phone for.

I think what makes the Palm based versions so great is that they are designed with the "mobile user" in mind whereas the Windows version simply scales down the desktop OS and tailor it to add some useful mobile features. Of course, I've owned neither- so that's just based on a casual use, but she's in the business of Treo's and her thoughts seem to reinforce this.

Image from treotoday.com

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