Why I’m Never Getting Another Motorola Cell Phone – A Case Study in Design
I own a Motorola V180. I hate this phone. I want to chuck it at walls so very often. I explain why here.
I’ve been meaning to post this, as undoubtedly some of you have noticed, I am very upset at my cell phone. It’s not just its abject failure to work as any stable form of communications, though that’s part of it.
Just to start out, I want to make a few clarifications:
First, when I say “never again”, I mean “until proven wrong” (this is in contrast with my “never use Sprint” policy, which is deep-seated and will last as long as it possibly can). Secondly, yes, I mean any Motorola phone – this includes the RAZR and the ROKR, because, despite these two phones’ respective sexiness factor, as far as I can tell, these design issues apply to all of Motorola’s current lines of telephones, including my friend’s RAZR I played with. Thirdly, this is not a vendetta agains Motorola – I had a StartTAC back in the day and loved that phone like a brother, even in the face of the new-fangled color screens, non-alphanumeric displays, and cameras. It’s just they don’t seem to have kept up with the pack (or at least Nokia). Finally, my next phone will probably be a Nokia. I have experience with Nokias, and loved my old one, even if it got dust inside the faceplate a lot – I put that thing through enormous abuse, and it never stopped delivering like a pro. Plus, the design decisions in terms of the software were so subtly useful, except for one, which I’ll get to in a bit. Anyway – on with the show.
For fairness sakes, I ought to start this off with Motorola’s successes with this phone in my eyes:
Things Motorola Did Right
- Standard USB connectivity with a standard 5-pin mini USB connector built into the phone (of course, if you’re a Windows person, you have to shell out big buck for their accompanying software.
- Having four different customizable functions a simple click away from the home screen is very nice.
- Works with iSync. (I’m not sure this is Motorola’s doing, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.
- It uses a standard hands-free set connector
- There is a microphone, and two speakers (one for speakerphone, one for the earpiece
That’s more or less it. Now for the meat: