Hi Igor, It would be very useful if you could file your issues on the OpenMoko bug tracker at http://bugzilla.openmoko.org. This would ensure your issues are dealt with and you receive proper feedback from the developers.
Regards, Thomas On Sun, 2007-10-14 at 22:38 -0400, Igor Foox wrote: > Yesterday (and today) I used the neo as a phone for the first time, > after gsm started mostly working out of the box. I'm really excited > about this development and I think that it marks a huge milestone for > the project. So congratulations to everyone who worked so hard on this > project! > > I've got a lot of feedback about my usage of the phone. Both minor > points as well as bigger design issues. I'm going to post them here > for discussion, in no particular order. But if there are better places > where specific points should be redirected, I'll be happy to do that. > A lot of the issues I'm going to raise are negative, but it's just > constructive criticism from a user's point of view. :-) > > Voice/Talking: > - There is a very strong amplification of background noise when in a > voice call. If you are in a quiet room the sound is pretty good (and > the volume is nice and loud). But when there is even mild background > noise in your location it gets amplified, and both you and the other > party barely hear anything. > - I tried playing with sidetone in alsamixer but that didn't help, > so I don't think that that's the problem. > - I'm not sure in which component of the software stack this > happens, but it seems to me that we might need to investigate some > noise cancellation algorithms and apply those to the incoming sound > when in a voice call. Does anyone have any experience with this, or > does anyone at least know whether this is a common thing to do with > cell phones? > > UI: > - The current keyboard is highly unusable. I know it's intended to be > used with a stylus, and it's fine for that, but it's completely > unreasonable to expect a user to have a stylus for activities like > SMS, or entering a new contact. And even with pretty small fingers > it's pretty hard for me to type on the keyboard. > - In the Contacts application, it's impossible to enter a phone number > (and maybe an email address) for a contact when the phone is not > connected to the GSM network. > - In the dialer application there's apparently a 'cursor' that you can > move by clicking somewhere on the textfield displaying the current > phone number. But there is no visual feedback for the cursor so if you > accidentally place it in the middle of a number you're left thinking > you will be very confused. > - The scrolling is very cool, but it's often difficult to scroll when > the items you're scrolling are clickable, because it incorrectly gets > recognized as a click. > - The dialer does not always "pop up" on an incoming call. So when the > phone starts ringing you need to open the dialer application and then > answer the call. > - The dialer application has the "hangup" button on the top right of > the screen when in a call. When you actually talk on the phone it's > _really_ easy to touch that part of the screen with your face, which > results in 3-4 accidental hangups per call. Oops. :-) > - The "status" icons on the top tend to disappear once in a while. > Sometimes a reboot gets them back. Sometimes it doesn't. But usually > two or three reboots get them back. Very perplexing. :) > > I'm going to continue using the phone for the next few days and try to > identify more issues. I think that the only major issue here is the > background noise problem. If that is resolved we would be well on our > way to having a phone ready to be tested by some real consumers. > > Igor > -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community