From UIQ 3 to S60: Part 5

I was organising a couple of social gatherings last week. Both involved people that I don’t contact regularly. Being the point of contact, I was naturally the person who people come to for details. And with a last minute change for one of the events, I found myself frequently looking up people’s addresses and contact details as well as relating those information to others.

Viewing Contact Details

Looking up people’s mobile no. is quite easy on the E71 standard contacts. It cleverly prioritises mobile numbers to be displayed first. In many cases, this is the extent of my contact search. But for people who have more than 1 mobile or at times that I need to look up more details, the E71’s way of displaying contact details proved to be less than satisfactory.

On the G700’s standard contacts, I was able to see up to 8 details (first/last name, title, position, photo, phone/mobile no., email/web address) of a contact on 1 screen. This compares to a maximum of 4 details (first/last name, photo, mobile) shown on a E71’s contact details screen. For those contacts that have titles, I can’t even see their mobile no. without scrolling.

It’s good that the E71 places the info in a way that a contact’s mobile comes before their home phone no., so a lot of times, it’s enough to just go into the first screen if mobile no. is what I’m after. But if I’m after the address like I was multiple times in the last week, then it takes me between 3 and 12 key presses, depending on the amount of details a particular contact has, to scroll to the address I need. On the G700, I simply press once on the next tab to see the address of a contact.

Display Limitations

I’m actually surprised to see so many of my contacts’ email address not showing fully because they’re more than 26 characters long. Both the E71 and G700 behave the same way in this area. The G700 has a zoom feature, and when set to small it displays longer email addresses without problem. The E71 however, doesn’t have zoom to help improve its display volume.

This limitation also plays out in my viewing of contacts notes on the E71. Same as anyone’s contacts, details change over time with people moving house, changing jobs, getting married, changing email address etc. In order to capture all that, I use the note field of contacts to jot down what and when things changed, so next time I look up a contact with multiple email addresses or numbers, I know which is the most up to date and which one to use. I also use it as a memo sometimes to jot down important info relating to a contact. The character limit means that I can’t see the full content of my notes most of the time unless I go into edit mode, which is another 2 presses after scrolling to the note field. On the G700, I can easily press once more after address to go to the next tab or press twice from the detail view for it to display up to 10 lines of text.

My Preference

In more than one way, viewing contact details on the G700 is a far more satisfying experience for me than on the E71. I have to say I like the way I can scroll through my list of contacts from the detail view just by pressing left and right. It means that I can see some of the details of a contact as I scroll, not dissimilar to scrolling through the conatct list on a G700. The order of contact info on the E71 however makes this less useful than it should be.

Overall, I still prefer the G700’s treatment of contact display because I can see more in less time and key presses. But with some improvements, I’m sure viewing contacts would be a more pleasant experience too on the E71.

Posted March 18, 2009