Forgot your password?
New user?
RIM Announces Blackberry Bold with enhanced screen
Document Actions
Handset Design: New Nokia N78's non-traditional number pad
Nokia N78 with four-button number pad. Frontal view at a slight angle. Screen at top and number pad below are fully visible. Casing is black on the flat sides, with silver for the band running around the edge. For a larger view, click on the photo.
Nokia has just made the latest version of its candy-bar shaped N78 model available in the United States.
Unlike phones with one button for each number, The N78 groups each row of numbers on a single horizontal bar. For example, the top bar is for the numbers 1, 2, and 3. To select the number 1, the user presses the left side of the top bar. For the number 2, press the middle part of the same bar. And, for the number 3, the right side of the same bar. The same logic applies to the bar for numbers 4, 5, and 6, and so on.
InformationWeek suggest that this number pad "may take some time to get used to." See its short article on the N78 at: http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/smartphones/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208800546.
A detailed analysis of the N78's key pad design is available on iGadgetLife.com. A central concern with the numeric part of the keypad is its size: just 2.8 centimeters from the left side of the number 1 to the right side of the number 3. Nokia's N95, by contrast, has a 4.0 centimeter span from edge to edge of each row of numbers. Check out iGadgetLife's analysis and comments by readers at: http://igadgetlife.com/2008/05/13/n78-keypad-what-were-you-thinking-nokia/.
Do you think this approach to keypad design will make wireless products more or less usable?