From: Earle Martin Date: 16:48 on 14 Apr 2007 Subject: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus I have one of these popular although now slightly dated phones. Overall it behaves itself, but there are several points about its user interface that make my blood boil. The OS designers don't seem to have understood that some actions need confirmation. Hit the "cancel" button while typing a text message - easily done as it's right next to the 3 button, which happily enough produces the letter "E", the most common in the English language - boom, your message is gone. That's great fun if, like me, you're not exactly an SMS-typing speed demon. Close the flipscreen? That cancels it out too. There *is* a drafts folder for saving messages in, but... you can't do that when editing. You have to choose "send", then select a recipient, then bring up the menu. Oh, and once you've got to the screen where you select a recipient, you can't go back to editing the message. You have to save it to the drafts, then choose "drafts" and select the message again. When looking at text messages in your inbox, if you bring up the menu, the top item is "delete". Since I use this item all the time, my hand has developed a bit of muscle memory for deleting messages. However, if you look at messages in the outbox, the top menu item is "resend". Guess what happens every now and then when I'm clearing messages out of my outbox? Even if I didn't have any muscle memory, to get away from the option I have to use the down arrow button - which is right next to the redundant button in the middle of the arrow buttons that acts as "OK" or "confirm". Redundant because this option is always assigned to one of the two control buttons next to the screen anyway; it's totally unneeded and I only ever use it when hitting it by mistake. It's awkward to press on purpose, anyway. And of course, in the mind of whatever idiot designed this software, resending a text is a non-confirmed action. Once you've chosen "resend" by mistake, that's it: the message is sent. No way to cancel How often do people need to send the same message a second time? That option should be way down the menu, with a big "are you sure?" confirmation dialog. Better be careful when taking photos, too. After you take a picture, one of the buttons is "store". It brings up a menu... of which the top item is "send in message". If you accidentally choose that when you meant to save the photo, you're fucked. There's no way to cancel out and save the photo instead. Hate, hate, hate.
From: Earle Martin Date: 13:49 on 15 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus On 15/04/07, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) <philippe.bruhat@xxxx.xx> wrote: > Did you try sending it to yourself? What, and pay money for the privilege of doing so? No thanks, I think I'll live without the photo.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 09:39 on 16 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus On Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 01:49:54PM +0100, Earle Martin said: > What, and pay money for the privilege of doing so? No thanks, I think > I'll live without the photo. On mine, sending also stores the photo. Software version is R374_G_0E.40.3CR (you can get this by pressing *#9999# quickly)
From: Earle Martin Date: 10:20 on 16 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus On 16/04/07, Simon Wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > On Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 01:49:54PM +0100, Earle Martin said: > > What, and pay money for the privilege of doing so? No thanks, I think > > I'll live without the photo. > > On mine, sending also stores the photo. That's not something I would have guessed... > Software version is R374_G_0E.40.3CR Mine is too. The question is, will T-Mobile charge me money to send a message to myself? (And does that even work?) I'm on a pay-as-you-go scheme, and no doubt the network really gouges people like me for multimedia mail.
From: Smylers Date: 11:45 on 16 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus Earle Martin writes: > On 16/04/07, Simon Wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > > On mine, sending also stores the photo. > > That's not something I would have guessed... > > > Software version is R374_G_0E.40.3CR > > Mine is too. The question is, will T-Mobile charge me money to send a > message to myself? (And does that even work?) What about if you try to send the photo to an invalid number? Does the 'saving a copy thing' still get triggered even though the sending fails (and presumably, doesn't charge you)? Smylers
From: Earle Martin Date: 11:49 on 16 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus On 16/04/07, Smylers <Smylers@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > What about if you try to send the photo to an invalid number? Does the > 'saving a copy thing' still get triggered even though the sending fails > (and presumably, doesn't charge you)? Aha! I've just discovered that if you get as far as the enter-a-number-to-send-to screen, enter nothing, *then* hit cancel, it still saves the picture. So presumably it auto-saves the image after you've finished composing the message. It is hateful that I have had to find this out.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 11:45 on 16 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus Cellphones are hate wrapped in hate, with hate on the side, hate for an appetizer, and a choice of hate for dessert. They are so hateful that even Windows would only improve them, yet Microsoft has managed to sour that by deliberately crippling Windows CE to make it look more like PalmOS... but without actually picking up any of the benefits of PalmOS in the process. They're lucky that Palm lost the plot and tried to make PalmOS into a bad copy of Windows... And even that is just a chaser to the hate that is the cellphone.
From: Robert Rothenberg Date: 13:37 on 16 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus On 16/04/07 11:45 Peter da Silva wrote: > Cellphones are hate wrapped in hate, with hate on the side, hate for an > appetizer, and a choice of hate for dessert. Cellphones are hate a la carte.
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