7 iPhone Interface Issues that Really Need Fixing
Philip Wilkinson on May 26, 2008, in Products
9 commentsWith everyone talking about the possible features in the new upcoming iPhone V2 - I thought it was actually worth a piece on a range of user interface improvements they could offer at the same time. Some of which you’ve probably been inwardly fuming about but never really thought it deserved enough energy to mention.. so here we go..
- SMS and Phone should not be separate. The Phone area has contacts, voicemail etc.. but not the SMS option which would fit much more nicely in this section rather than being an independent icon and area. Americans - please listen - SMS is not some new fangled phone add-on.
- Contacts needs a “search” function. There are numerous occasions where I can only remember a surname or the company the person works for - don’t make me drill alphabetically through the entire list. Sure, I can reverse how the names are sorted in terms of first or surname first - but this is a pain to keep changing and doesn’t help when I need the company name.
- Clicking a phone number in email / Safari should be cleverer. I like the feature to click a number and it immediately starts to dial it - but please start to handle country codes better! If someone types +1 (0)233 34434 - it tries to dial the entire thing including the number in brackets and of course fails. Learn that a number in bracket is optional and only used if the country code preceeded by the plus symbol is not used.
- You can’t switch to something else while listening to a voicemail. Often someone leaves a message from a “blocked” number and reads out the number I should call them back on via the voicemail message. So what I try and do is flick to the dialpad to type in the number as they read it to me, yet the voicemail then stops and needs to be played again. Pah.
- Calendar needs a search function too. If it’s supposed to be a mirror of iCal - put the search in!
- Stop overwriting Safari windows. I’ve noticed in the latest software that if you click a link from an email to open up a new window in Safari, it will tend to overwrite something you’ve previously had open if the maximum number of windows are already open. I’ve left a webpage up their once to come back to later only to find the iPhone has loaded a new page over it.
- Finally, have a single button easily accessible from the main menu that lets me turn on and off any battery-sapping features in one go - wi-fi, bluetooth, and now 3G. Do we really need to keep going to settings all the time…
Well, that’s the main ones covered. Anyone got other interface niggles that we hope Apple have fixed for the new release?
8 comments
Everything you said, plus “please.”
(7) You’ve already got: From the main menu, click once for Settings, then click on the very first setting.
It isn’t perfect: (a) it is two clicks, not one. (b) it is called “Airplane Mode” not “Battery Saver Mode”. But it is very close.
Re: the image, is that Windows the iPhone’s running?
Yep - running parallels…
@DavidPhillipOster - well kind of, as you would still like the phone to work where as Airplane mode turns that off too…
1) Searching emails would be good, but maybe I’m just spoiled by gmail. I have gmail IMAPped in to the iphone and have to open up a browser whenever i need to search for an archived mail.
2) around London their are various private wifi networks: t-mobile, bt, the cloud. The wifi automatically picks these up but then can’t do anything because I don’t want to pay and haven’t logged in. It would be nice to be able to tell the phone that once, and not have it interrupt me every time, but instead stick to Edge.
3) there should be half-an-inch or so of un-insertable space above the keyboard when editing emails. Often I’ve missed a top-row letter (qwertyuio, or p) and inserted the pointer and continued to type without noticing. The machine shouldn’t let me do that, because it’s annoying.
@Neil
2: You can definitely do this already. Go to “settings -> wi-fi -> Ask to Join Networks (off) and it won’t pester you again
3: Good point
Sounds rubbish. I, for one, will not buy one.
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[...] Recently I read an article from Crowdstorm blogger Philip Wilkinson where he potificates 7 ways Apple could improve the iPhone experience. The best part is the suggestions are simple and wouldn’t require any serioud effort on Apples part except maybe using their ear once and a while. 7 iPhone Interface Issues that Really Need Fixing [...]
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