Phone Call screen in Windows Phone

   I've wanted to write this post for quite a while but I've always postponed it as it is a very subjective matter. In the end I decided to write my opinion. Windows Phone is really great but there are some aspects that could be improved and seem that have been designed in a hurry and never finished. One of this aspects, and it is not what this post is about, is the Application List. It is ugly and not very usable. How is it possible that Windows Mobile had before anyone else folders/groups but they are still missing in Windows Phone after more than 2 years? The application list really needs improvements/redesign.

    This post instead is about the Phone call screen. I've have always had problems with my windows phone devices starting with the Omnia 7 and ending with my Lumia 800 (I've actually tried 3 different Lumia 800 all of them gave me the same problem). The short story is that I am able to drop the call with my face by pressing the Endcall button, put the call on speaker, put it on mute or hold. I am not the only person that has these problems: my wife has the same problem with her new Lumia 710 and also heard from other people. It is a combination between the proximity sensor that activates the screen and the way I am holding the phone. So I've wondered if maybe there is a better location for the Endcall button.

    Lets start with a photo I've found on the web  (have no idea who she is) :

 

If you look at the way she is holding her phone (which I think is 90% of the cases) the upper part of the screen is in contact with the face. Let's presume that by a faulty behavior (bad driver, hardware fault, OS fault or the fact that the hardware and the software are not designed by the same company) the screen turns on while you talk. The highest probability to touch the screen with the face is in the upper half of the screen. Let's see what it means in Windows Phone:

So it is Endcall, Speaker, Hold, and Mute (exactly my case).

If you look again at the picture you can see that the less exposed part of the touchscreen(so the better choice for the buttons location)  is the lower part of the screen. The lower you go the smaller the probability is, so the best choice for the End call button is the lower part of the screen (this way you minimize the probability to press the button on faulty behavior). This is exactly (I don't know if this is the reason) what iPhone and Android did:

Both of them have chosen to put the End call button near the lower part of the touch screen. For Android (which also depends on the hardware implementation) Google concentrated all the buttons at the lower part of the screen. On the iPhone they kept the other buttons in the center region but they do have really good control over the hardware and putting a call on hold or mute is not as bad as dropping the call.

So it would be better to move the buttons in the lower part of the screen. The blank space could be filled with social information, last call, email, sms. 

Hope we will see some improvements in Phone Call screen in Windows Phone 8

NAMASTE

WP7 Series - Phone Interface

Back in February I was really upset when they didn't show the phone interface of the new WP7. For me it is still the most important part of a Phone. Today, when I saw the videos published on Engadget I understood why... Not only that it looks unfinished, but it's like they didn't really start developing that part. Why did they invest a lot of work in the XBox Live hub (avatar movements with the accelerometer) and they didn't developed a decent CTP phone interface ? (it could be my impression but they focused too much on Zune aspects - Joe Belfiore was on the Zune team right? - I once said that it looks more like iPod Touch for the iPhone instead of the iPhone itself). Don't understand me wrong... I like a lot the new WP7 but it lacks so many things that it seems a step backward. I was disappointed when Microsoft launched WM 6.5 from a developer point of view (a year after the release of 6.1 there were not many new things added) but I always thought that they were investing everything on WM7. I think a lot of developers hoped for more as they are investing time and resources developing on Microsoft mobile platform (I don't think Microsoft can afford loosing developers on the mobile platform)

But let's go back to the phone interface. I always thought that Microsoft will learn from the mistakes he made and will get a decent phone interface. Let's start with Windows Mobile 6.1:

It is a really ugly phone interface (useless to say that it was released after WM 5 phone interface which was the same). Really small buttons that usually you will have to use the pen to dial a number, a lot of space used without being optimized, informations missing.
HTC understood that this interface was a real problem for selling massmarket devices so they rewrote the interface:

they used bigger buttons, better phone dial-pad, but still a lot of space was not optimized (also because of the OS that didn't let them to)
After they saw the "decent" phone interface developed by HTC Microsoft didn't learned too much and released in 6.5 a better interface than the standard in 6.1 but worse than the one created by HTC

Why don't they learn from the iPhone or even Android? In my opinion the phone interface of the iPhone is the most usable one.


Really nice big buttons that you can press easily, essential information (I can always see the clock cause I want to know if it's not too late when I am dialing someone, or if someone calls me), the battery power and also the power of my radio signal. Nice modern UI. Anyway I think both iPhone and Android interface could be improved.

Let's see a little the WP 7 Phone interface as it is today:

The button size is ridiculous, a lot of unused space, essentially information missing. The only thing that I like is the dial-pad buttons. Remember that your potential client is buying a phone and after that everything that comes with it. If it isn't a decent phone he won't buy it.

I hope someone from Microsoft will read this post and start treating the phone interface as one of the most important pieces of the device (especially now that the OEM will not be able to personalize it). You got the background right (with silverlight you can develop awesome UI), so don't ruin it. We, developers, need that you get WP7 right as some of our work depend on it.

P.S. Going home to watch episode 8 from Lost - The final season Simplified by Windows 7 :)