After trying to help my sister get her new Motorola Razr up and running today, I got to thinking a lot about the just what my must-have cell phone interface features are. I'm pretty passionate about my mobile interfaces and am an admitted Nokia junky (though I'm not using one at the moment). What this is, however, is a list of features that would make my perfect phone, lumped into the "musts" and the "nice" (what I'd prefer a phone had).
Musts
- One-button acess to both phonebook and text messaging.
- Ability to view phonebook from phone memory or sim card.
- Multiple numbers per name (cell, home, work, etc.)
- Easily switch between vibrate and ring. (I hate the idea of having to go into a stupid menu to try and turn my ringer off.)
- Well displayed missed call notification as well as voicemail notification with number of new voicemails.
- Ability to put a first and last name in the phonebook. (What can I say? I like to have people's full names.)
- Easily clear sim and phone memory (seperately, that is).
- Key lock. (I think all phones have it at this point, but I would be calling all over the world if it weren't for this handy feature.)
Nice
- Ability to custom set some of the home buttons for easy access to frequent used commands/programs.
- I'm not sure how to explain this, but when I skipped down the phone list based on a letter of the alphabet, on my Nokia it only displayed that letter. For instance, if I skipped to the "n" it only showed people whose name started with "n." Whereas my Siemens skips you to the "n" part of the list, but when you scroll down it goes straight to "o" next. This is only annoying because on my Nokia there were people who were at the end of a letter that I knew I could just hit "up" to the get to. Pressing the "up" button got me to the bottom of the "n" list. (Does that make any sense?)
- Ability to set the primary number when multiples are listed. (I used to have this feature on my Nokia, basically it allows you to say I want to call this person's cell when I hit their name unless I specify otherwise.)
- Bluetooth. (Okay, so it's not really part of the interface. But, it can make the interface a whole lot easier to deal with by allowing you to input via your computer and sync.)
- Easily send a text message to multiple contacts.
- Date listing or at least quick acess to it.
I think that's about all I can think of at the moment. What am I missing? What are the features you can't live with out? What about the ones you'd love to see?