The Samsung Knack: another cell phone keypad gone wrong.
My grandparents recently took a leap into the 21st century by signing up for a cell phone. I’ve had my iPhone long enough that I had forgotten how ugly and painful the majority of cell phones really are! Invariably, the worst cell phone offenses come from the keypads.
My grandparents ended up with a Samsung Knack because it was cheap and had reasonably large buttons. In fact, Samsung really gets some points for the generous key size and dedicated keys for ICE, 911, and speakerphone. But even with these minor wins, function was clearly sacrificed so that the phone could be made more ugly.
The most grievous offense is the navigation pad. The little dots are impossible to press, and for some reason the arrow keys have dots instead of arrows, obfuscating their function. To make things worse, there’s a little “OK” button in the middle that ends up getting half of the key presses meant for the arrows. The “OK” button seems to be totally redundant anyway, since “Send” does everything “OK” does.
How about the button labeled “Clear.” It doesn’t clear anything. It can be used to navigate up one level in the menu hierarchy or as a backspace key. Totally counter-intuitive to group these functions; even worse to call it “Clear.”
The symbols on the pound and star keys are also particularly confusing, and the buttons on the sides of the phone were way too easy to press accidentally. I could go on and on about how bad this keypad is, but instead I think I’ll go write a thank-you note to my iPhone.
Where’s that wall wart?
Less friendly when you don't know what gadget they power.
As a technology enthusiast and sometime pack rat, I have collected plenty of wall warts, those compact power supplies we’ve all come to know and love. I wish that all devices could have the power supply built-in like my printer, monitor, speakers, etc. but I also realize that you can’t always fit it into a compact device. So sometimes I guess it’s okay to have an external power supply.
But as as I was sifting through my cable collection the other day, I realized that about half of my power supplies are generic supplies with no indicator what device they belong to. Yes, production costs stay low, but c’mon. Put a sticker on it at least—that way I know when it’s time to find a new home for my old warts.
And, if you really want to be cool, why don’t you figure out how to standardize so that more power supplies are interchangeable? Does your device really require 11 volts with a center-negative connector?