Monday, July 1, 2002

Zaurus SL 5500 Hardware A couple days ago I was complaining about how bad the software on the new Sharp Zaurus SL 5500 is, but I also commented that I really liked the hardware. While this is true there are still several areas where Sharp could really improve it. First, make the cover clear so you can read the screen with it closed. They don't show the cover in the picture linked above, but it is a grey semi-transparent plastic that allows you to see just enough of the screen that it makes you wish it was completely clear. This is very annoying. With the built in keyboard there are many times when there is no reason to open the screen cover to use the device. They would have actually been better off if they'd just made the cover completely opaque. In that case you wouldn't be constantly teased by the fuzzy, but unreadable view of the screen that you do get. They also made a mistake by combining the on/off button with the cancel button. Basically to turn the device on you hold the button down for a couple seconds and to turn it off you do the same. However, when the device is already on just a normal press of the button (not press and hold) cancels whatever you were doing. These functions should have never been combined, it leads to situations where you can loose data by failing to hold the button down long enough to trigger a turn off event and instead end up triggering a cancel event. They should have provided a dedicated on/off button. Finally the built in keyboard, while much better then handwriting recognition, has a few problems. Namely the issue is with the mode buttons. There are two mode buttons fn and shift (actually two shifts). The problem is that they treated the keyboard just like it was a desktop keyboard and put the buttons right along with all the other keys. On a desktop this works OK because you have use of all your fingers plus your thumbs and there is plenty of space. On a thumbboard like on the Zaurus you only use your thumbs to type and dealing with the mode keys in the same space is very cumbersome. To make things worse they behave differently as well. The shift key must be held at the same time as typing the key you want shifted. However, the fn key can either be held or it can simply be pressed and released and then the next key can be pressed. Basically putting the Zaurus into fn mode for one keypress. Where all of this becomes a real problem is when you want to type long sequences of numbers. On the Zaurus keyboard all numbers are accessed via the fn key. So you have three options. 1. Try to hold down fn with one thumb and use the other to span the keyboard and type the numbers. 2. press fn once before each number and then type the number. 3. press fn and then turn on num lock which basically shifts the Zaurus into fn mode until you press fn + num lock again. For #1 it's very cumbersome with the limited space and small size of the keys to try to hold down both buttons at once. For #2 you double the number of keypresses required to enter a number. For #3 you put the Zaurus into a mode that will almost always cause an error later when you try to type a regular letter. The mode indicator is software only and very hard to see in the GUI, so hard in fact, that it just as well not even be there. Anyway, they really should have moved both the shift and fn keys out of the same space as the other keyboard keys. Maybe put them on the side of the device or somewhere else where they could easily be held down with a finger while typing with your thumbs. This would eliminate any need for modes like num lock or caps lock. You'd always access shifted states by holding down one of the mode keys creating a pseudo mode that's only in effect while the key is depressed. I don't know exactly where the keys should be placed, user testing is required for that, but where they are now is the wrong place. Another thing that I wonder about is if anyone has ever done any research into alternate key layouts for the general keyboard on these devices. So far every device has just had a qwerty keyboard. I'd have to wonder if the switch to an alternate layout that is more optimized for two thumb use would be beneficial. For instance there are many alternative layouts for on screen keyboards that are much easier to use then the standard qwerty layout. Fitaly is one that is fairly common though I've seen research showing better alternatives are possible. On a desktop keyboard there is a lot of muscle memory to get in the way of different layouts, but thumbboards are still new and most people won't be used to them yet. Hopefully the people making these devices are thinking through this problem. 6:37:37 PM