I recently gave up my Blackberry in favor of a Motorola Q. After 1 month with the Q (and Mobile 5), I've concluded that the things that bug me aren't just changes I need to get used to... instead, they're steps in the wrong direction for features and usability. Off the top of my head, here are some of my observations/frustrations:
* Speed dial sucks. I choose to carry around a bigger device specificially for the quertyness of it... I want to use any of my 26 keys for speed dial. I don't want to be limited to my numeric keys, regardless of how many speed dial #s they can store. Also, the Blackberry had a a-z speeddial reference page that was easy to open and quick to edit. Also, voice recognition is still far from perfect.
* Adaptive Interfaces are bad. Don't move icons. I expect them in a certain place so I can 'habitually' get to where I want. I don't want to have to hunt for it. Putting most-recent/most-accessed icons first doesn't work. Fortunately it's just the Homescreen layouts that try to be smart for me, so I changed to 'Basic' for now so I don't have to worry about it.
* Let me move my icons. On the blackberry, alt + click, scroll, click. Done.
* Don't bury alarm in 'Settings'. This is just annoying. Also, 'Disable on weekends' is a great option I really miss, especially since enabling/disabling it is accessed via: Start > Settings > Clock & Alarm > Alarm
* Email notification - This should be a setting in Profile, along with calls, alarms, etc. Instead it vibrates and it's not at all intuitive as to how to change this (haven't found it yet).
* No Alt-Tab??? There is no hotkey as far as I can tell to switch between tasks. There is no easy to see what's running excepting going to Start > System Tools > Task Manager. Once you're there, you can kill tasks or exit - at the very least, I want to 'go to task' from here, ideally I want a alt-tab-like hotkey.
* No backlight button? Display is either off completely, or 100% brightness, which lights up a dark room and drains the battery much faster than I'd like. Blackberry display was always visible, backlight completely off, and extremely easy to turn on (dim or bright) when needed.
Anyway, there are some cool things (*cough* nethack *cough*) like the camera, Windows file IO, slim profile, Mini SD slot, etc that are worthwhile...
Bottom line: It would be a very tough sell to get a company to use this device if they've used Blackberries in the past.
Print | posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 9:07 AM