User Centered

Update: If you're having technical issues with your phone, please check out:
a RAZR/Motorola support forum (here's one). If you have usability, interface, or user experience related comments, please feel free to share.


Nothing but glowing reviews all over the place for this phone. I bought it because my primary requirement was a small phone since I put it in my pocket. It is a great phone- lots of features that I’m sure you already know about. But here are my small gripes with it-

Issues:
1)The half second delay whenever I open the display. Often I find it has old information on it from the last time I opened the phone up. Like- if it’s set on “Loud” then (with the clamshell closed) I set it to vibrate, then flip open the clamshell later, I see it shows the “Loud” icon for a split second before it updates. Very silly looking

2)Bluetooth and sync- I still don’t know how I can sync with any contacts or backup. I guess I need to buy software to do this- that wasn’t what I thought when I bought it.. although I’m not surprised. However, I would have thought at a minimum I could plug the phone through USB and get the pictures off of it. Win XP cannot find any drivers though. So apart from a headset, it’s no good.

3)Speaking of the headset, I have to turn on bluetooth manually in order to use it. I guess that’s a good thing for security and battery life, but the phone gives me the impression that battery life will only last two seconds with BT turned on- so I manually turn on BT every time I want to use the headset which leads to dramatic underusage of the device. I’ve got the Motorola H820 (I think that’s what it is)- I also don’t like the way you turn it on/off. I hear the other headsets with the boom are better for that.

4)Even when I put some menu items like Bluetooth and audio settings using the soft buttons or the “main menu” I still have to dig through two or three more clicks/menus before I can activate the settings. Why can’t phone makers look at the tasks that people want to do with the dang
phones? Am I the only guy who wants one button access to switch from audible to vibrate? My first Nokia back in 97 did this quite well- you held the ”#” sign until it switch- and there was no audible confirmation of this which I liked (IIRC, it may have vibrated a bit when I switched.)

On the motorola the menu items (I’ve assigned “audio” to my left softkey) I have to select audio and usually two or three left or right clicks to get to the correct setting. I know you can also set the mode with the shell closed, but that’s a three or four button process too and that’s slightly more annoying because when you switch to an audible setting, you have to listen to the ringer volume. Look- I only want my phone to make noise when I have a call or a message of some sort. Be quite otherwise.

More:
Also- why can’t manufacturers make a phone that doesn’t have a stupid startup jingle when you turn it off or on? When the phone is in vibrate mode, it correctly does not make a noise (although I’ve read about phones that do!) why can’t this be an option that I can turn on or off? If you must insist on letting me know the phone is being turned on (even though I just pressed the button) can you please have a somewhat respectable notification? A standard beep perhaps? Why the little jingle?

Also- in somewhat contrast to the above paragraph- there on the RAZR, I don’t think there is quick enough feedback when I hit the power button. The keypad lights (I think) up- but in a lit room, you don’t see it. There is too long a delay from when you hold the button down from when you see the screen light up. This is worsened by the “hold down to power on” problem that I have. You never feel confident that you’ve held it down for three seconds unless you get feedback right away- so you hold it until you see the screen turn on. In addition, you hold it down probably a lot harder than you would normally to make sure you are in fact holding it down.