Ease-of-use dogs Motorola
Motorola Usability Problems — “Three quarters of RAZR users would not buy another Motorola handset because they are difficult to use, according to a poll by Mobile. A survey of consumers who had bought Motorola products found many are still struggling with usability.”
Funny, I was just talking to a friend of mine recently about his RAZR. Scratch that. He got rid of the RAZR because it was so painful to use. Further, he really didn’t like the way that he had to keep paying for every little bit of functionality and content. Nothing was easy or obvious for him with the RAZR. Good thing it is thin and sexy, and heavily marketed, otherwise I think it would have been a bomb for Motorola.
(Hat tip: Szuc)
October 30th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I’m not in the least surprised by this story - Motorola have a (anecdotal) bad reputation as far as usability is concerned. It’s actually interesting that one of the few areas where people regularly talk about usability (even if they’re not calling it that) is mobile handsets. Perhaps because its a device they use a lot, that’s deeply embedded in their lives.
I know a lot of people (me included) who’ll take some prising away from Nokia, purely on usability grounds, although my newest phone, a 6233, has some quirks I’m not so pleased about….
October 31st, 2006 at 3:28 am
I’m not surprised either. My first mobile phone was a Timeport p7389, which still stands out as the most unusable phone I’ve ever encountered. I think the only way you can sell these is by mail order, because no-one who’s had a chance to try it would ever want to buy it - despite the fact that it’s a tri-band phone, I’ve been unable to give mine away to anyone who’s tried to use it for more than a few minutes. I had to go back to using it a few weeks ago and just couldn’t believe how excruciatingly painful every aspect of it was.
November 1st, 2006 at 11:50 am
yep. it just took me a good 24hrs to work out how to change the clock/time in my Razr… not happy.