Still Pretty “Meh” About the Upcoming Windows Phone
I had to laugh when I saw the Gizmodo headline “Ballmer Promises over 500 New WP7 Features in Mango Update.” One thing we think about at Zeus Jones is how frequently software fails to engage consumers simply because it’s so overloaded with features, making it – above-all- confusing. 500 features almost seems like a parody of a common criticism of Microsoft.
Just like with graphic design, a platform can benefit from minimalism. The best-selling apps are often one-note functions that fulfill a specific need, rather than providing dozens of ways to approach one task.
Admittedly, a smart phone is a lot more complex than an app, and it does need more features. But even despite that, it seems like Microsoft’s new tricks are just keeping up with other phones, rather than developing anything revolutionary. When you’re talking about threading email conversations or image search features that Google discovered first, you’re implicitly saying “We didn’t create anything new.”
But despite all that, maybe people just hate these phones because they feature primarily white text on a plain black background. Why that design choice? It’s one of my pet peeves, and it gives the phone a flat, one-dimensional affect.
What do you think? Is there hope for this phone?
-Becky Lang