I say smart phones should and can return, but you say they still exist. Well flash back Watson, before the iPhone came out (now lets face it, it’s not really a “smart” phone anyway) these devices had a different name and were touch phones or PDA phones. You see I’m talking about the days when the sheriff was Windows Mobile, which means things were completely different, what were smart phones? Well they were the candy bar phones you see today, however these phones were smart, they were on par with the touch devices in terms of compatibilities.
Now the world of hackers and enthusiasts of Windows Mobile will say that the operating system never really got a successor. While Windows Phone exists, the architecture is completely different and so is the direction the operating system goes in. Windows Mobile tried to do what a computer was first and phone second, so these devices had those entire nick knacks like Office, and its routes came from more legacy PDA phones from years before.
Now why am I bringing this back up? Well you see I recently had to go back to my old BenQ e72 for various reasons. Now this little phone I picked up in 2009 I’m pretty sure. So I bought it after its time, as you can tell from how I’m telling this story the e72 was a little bit older then when I bought it. I’m fairly sure the device was a 2007 or 2008 device, hold on I can only find when it was announced which was 2007. So clearly from that you can tell it isn’t a spec king, its Camera is only a measly 2 mega pixels for instance. While no doubt spec wise it wasn’t king of the hill even back then, it was a middle of the pack for the candy form factor and gave a genuine punch to previous candy phones. Now design wise this phone was in a new league of its own, it was in a era when Windows Mobile started to sunset and the world was looking for something new, which was when most of the best looking devices came out. Compare our little e72 with some older candy phones of previous years you will see it is considerably thinner and smaller. However compare it with something much closer to our time, like the Zune HD while not a phone embodies the smaller scale touch screen factor which has become very common, and you will notice that they are round about the same size with the Zune been much thinner.
So clearly this phone isn’t the king of the hill, so where does its form factor lie today? Most cheaper phones which are not “smart phones” will have this candy style form factor however they are disappearing into the dust with the past few years been less and less new announcements of phones in this form factor. Which I think is a drastic loss to the mobile industry.
Ditch the whole idea of touch and enhancements which came with it, and keep to the whole button idea. Or use touch like the Nokia Touch and Type phones use them, how it is more of an “inclusion” not a requirement. I think a form factor simular to a Blackberry could also get help from this. Something like Windows Phone 7 with its metro style would be great to a point, I don’t think that style of design would work on a phone with this style. To push my point further, simular crowded versions which appeared in Windows Mobile at the time didn’t work either. If Microsoft were to reintroduce these form factors with a Metro interface the style would have to be considerably “lighter”, heck even something like they used on the Kin could work with some tweaking.
While it is out of date now, I think a modern approach to these type phones could still work and there would defiantly be a market for them.
The whole idea of this type of set up for phones with built in number pads and a “candy” form factor seems to relate to a stigma of they are for old people. I feel as if however if a push to make cheap, but functional styled candy phones with features which many smart phones have these days while giving it a much easier to use and setup approach then people will relate to them much easier and be more inclined to buy them.
The problem with smart phones these days seems to be that while they offer lots of features, the popular smart phones like the iPhone and various Android devices give users to much options, not that is a bad thing but many of these options are just in the users face. They don’t know why they need to go to a certain area in the settings to perform a task. Or they can’t simply find the feature they want. Moving away from setting up the phones even the whole icon list approach to phones is just stupid from a functionality stand point. While you can easily see a folder or item you have to look for these items much more then use them, that is why Windows Phone nailed the icon approach in the head and simplified it a little more, it still is at its core that disgusting icon approach which smart phones have come to be related to, but it does it in a more simplified elegant approach.