Having launched a mobile platform of their own, the Microsoft company were expecting an easily won popularity to dawn on them in a very short period of time. The continuity between WM and its PC counterpart was considered a major positive factor working in this direction. This, ironically, finally played an opposite role. Symbian, being more adapted to the specifics of the mobile devices, was never overthrown and is currently the market’s most successful mobile operating system, leaving WM to lag behind. The interface ergonomics of WM is largely disappointing. A user-friendly and intuitive UI, once transferred from desktop systems to the mobile, became a serious obstacle on the way to popularity.
It was not until some time had passed that the WM developers realized that a certain feel of negligence became associated with their creations and it would take a serious amount of time to introduce the much needed improvements and destroy the negative image. HTC are the Taiwan company who were first to set out on this difficult task, spawning a WM-powered Touch PDA in the last year. The largest novelty introduced in this model is the model’s fondness of finger operation without any need for a stylus. The concept was taken up by the rest of WM product designers, among them standing E-Ten, Gigabyte, ASUS and so on.
This year, the next entry in the Touch product line saw the daylight – TouchFLO 3D offers a plenty of showy special FX and a much improved functionality. This handset is the most advanced WM solution currently available from the market. The companies closest to this level of development are Samsung and Sony Ericsson, the rest of market players deeming it too expensive or simply out of their power take the necessary development expenses, resulting in
Regardless of the continuity in titles, the changes that affected the brand HTC launcher in its improved version are so vast that we’d rather call this a cardinal overhaul of functionality than a simple upgrade. The software refuses to install itself on other PDAs, including other Touch models, and no alternative of such kind is expected to arrive anytime soon. Diamond is the only and most important offer from HTC’s portfolio for foreseeable future, Touch Pro merely being its keyboard-equipped version with a minimum of other differences.
Just as in the earlier days, the standard WM interface isn’t left out, you can always access it through the options, and TouchFLO is basically a plugin seated atop. The current functionality is way better than the possibilities provided by the first incarnation of this software. The application icons are formed into a horizontal row. The active screen uses a lot of animations and 3D effects, which looks simply gorgeous. Even iPhone can’t offer something better (but still retains a higher degree of utility)
The weather application is what we liked the most. Once the expected temperature goes below zero, the screen becomes covered in white frost. A rainy day will result in a windshield wiper coming up, rubbing the raindrops away. This contributes a lot to the overall feel. We can’t recall a better designed interface which would go into the detail that far.
What is most important, HTC managed to preserve a high level of ergonomics and functionality along with the unmatched aesthetics: the finger-friendly optimizations are still in, even text input doesn’t require a stylus). New input methods and content sorting options were added. Still it must be understood that the largest bet is made on the effective looks and everything else are secondary points. As far as the primary aim goes, the interface hits the bull’s eye.
What would use Samsung for an adequate response? As mentioned a few times before, the company did their best not to fail. There are two interface modes available – a standard launcher and a brand menu, accompanied by a collection of widgets. The former looks quite ordinary, the only remarkable features being vibro acknowledgements and smooth finger scrolling, but the functionality isn’t too high, easily beaten by that of TouchFLO 3D. Widgets often prove helpful.
Widgets first appeared integrated into the firmware of the F480 TouchWiz panel , but it’s WiTu which now has them running as real time services. Samsung are so far the only company to offer this sort of services to the end user.
WiTu widgets follow a principle originating in the Vista desktop OS. The user can drag any widget and place it on the desktop. At that, you can manually specify a refresh period for the selected application (which would connect to the associated web server and update the data from time to time using a GPRS or WiFi connection). The user is free to customize the amount of information submitted to widget window, add and remove any number of them from the screen. To save some power, you can totally disable the widget service.
Also, WiTu features the IM+ instant messaging client, supporting ICQ, Google Talk, MSN and Jabber protocols. The GPRS Monitor preinstalled application keeps an eye on the amounts of incoming and outgoing traffic and calculates the costs basing on the specified tariff.
The application catalog developed exclusively for Samsung lets you download and customize a variety of additional software and content like games or music from the Samsung Fun Club site. From September 1st to November 3rd all the owners of WiTu aregranted a free internet access from the Golden WiFi provider, followed by a three month’s discount as large as 40%.
If we put all the local and third-party services aside, very little usability is left. It’s yet uncertain what course the development of this interface will take, but we may expect it to become a signature feature of the company’s smart gadgets, resulting in new widgets and updates to the existing ones. So far there’s no competition in this niche, this handset being the first product to feature the WiTu plugin system.
The comparison results in a very simple conclusion: WiTu is just too different from TouchFLO 3D too be openly regarded as a better or worse solution, either party showing a comparable level of ergonomics. The realization of TouchFLO3D seems to be a bit raw and doesn’t make it feel a wholesome product. On the other hand, Samsung’s diplomatic efforts finally yield a lot of popular services integrated into the firmware. We think that the rest of WM product developers will pick up the tendency, making deals with 3rd party local service providers to enhance their PDAs with additional services. For the time being, TouchFLO 3D looks a better choice than WM, despite the latter’s large choice of extra features.
Sony Ericsson stands out from the rest of the discussed interface. Not long ago, the company publicly released an SDK allowing 3rd party developers to design addons to their firmware. SE’s own efforts have resulted in very modest achievements so far. The company implemented a sort of active panels. Currently the application is in a larval stage and offers a very limited functionality, though the hidden potential is great and it’s up to the producers to give the idea a most successful shape in their future products.
The screen is filled with eight minimized windows which can be dragged from place to place or rotated all the way round. The trick is that every such thumbnail stays alive – a minimized clock keeps on ticking, the browser thumbnail shows the page loading progress meter. Almost any application can be instantly converted into a panel, for instance you can do that to the media player.
It’s a difficult task to keep a whole nine processes running and the same time and submitting all the information to the screen, but the powerful HTC software copes with the task. Occasional lags occur from time to time, but not on a scale larger than TouchFLO 3D. The performance will be revised and optimized before the final commercial version of the product is shipped to the stores; our test sample of the application took less memory than in its earlier incarnations. Let’s not forget than X1 has a 256 Mb of RAM, which is a great score for a WM product.
The initially existing panels include:
- Sony Ericsson – this panel gives access to weather forecast, financial rating and miscellaneous news services, as well as a world time clock and a few shortcuts to the basic communicative functions and applications.
- Media Experience – With this panel, you can open and play different types of media
- Slideshow – you can always use this to stick together a video clip from a bunch of smaller video fragments or phootos
- Microsoft Today – this will bring you all the way through to the Microsoft Today screen
- 3D Fish – a 3D fish tank screensaver, showcasing the full power of the onboard 3D accelerator
- FM radio – gives you control of the radio options
- Google – all Google services are accessible from this panel
The user is free to add custom panels. The preinstalled panels are all useful, except the 3D fish, which is ironically the most impressive one. The elements of the scene vividly respond to the touch of stylus, so please don’t hurt the fished. Drawing a line will make the fish school follow it, and picking on a fish will repel it.
The current level of implementation can’t stand up to what HTC has to offer us, it’s still a bit too raw. Though the real potential looks just immense, and we can always hope for massive improvements (and a lot of 3rd party upgrades) to appear in the foreseeable future. As of now, the visual impressions overshadow the usability. Next year we are going to get an updated version, promised to compete on par with HTC or even excel it.
In other words, we see SE emulate Samsung’s widgets, but this realization of the concept isn’t as successful. The corporation doesn’t look like a real challenger in the battle of interfaces, at least not until the end of this year.
All attempts of the Microsoft company to make up a really handy interface look pathetic when Apple’s brand interface comes in the spotlight. The iPhone smartphone offers a most brilliant UI to compensate for the technical downsides, which was probably the thing WM developers are currently aiming at in their attempts to make their platform work and look better. Even TouchFLO 3D can’t stand up to this marvel:
Let us note out that HTC are still leading in some aspects, e.g. their visual effects look better than Apple’s. But after calculating the final score, iPhone scores a huge and final win. It probably has the best touchscreen controls ever witnessed in a mobile device. However this is not to stay for long – Nokia 5800 is about to enter the market, the Finns’ first touchscreen smartphone.
“All the king’s horses, all the king’s men, couldn’t make Windows mobile again” No matter how hard WM licensees try to improve their products, the platform still doesn’t produce the impression of something you would want to spend your leisure time dealing with. Even the hardest-core finger-optimized PDAs still need a stylus for doing certain action. A massive OS update from Microsoft could be of help, but meanwhile Nokia is arriving to join the opposing ranks. We are expecting Nokia 5800 to appear before 2009 at a price of about 400 euros.
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