Arnold,
You make some fairly insightful points into the mind of a Japanese
consumer. I would like, however, to comment on those points:
Arnold P. Siboro wrote:
>1. alarms
>-5 alarms
>-each can be set to to daily, certain days, weekdays, weekends and one
>time.
>-each alarm can be set to display both message and picture
>
>
True. My wife mentioned the same thing when I brought her home an 802SE.
My answer to her was less-than-ideal: Actually the 802SE has unlimited
alarms, but you need to use the calendar function. This function, along
with the tasks, memos, and address book functions, synchronise with
Outlook beautifully, by the way, and have another feature which I find
marvellous: You can push a button with the phone folded shut, and have
the small external display show you your next appointment. The use of
the alarms in the calendar is clearly not something that Japanese
consumers are used to, however. My wife continued to use her SH-53 as
an alarm clock.
>2. picture/video editor
>
>
Absolutely true, but then again how many people actually use this
feature? You can put a frame on at the time when you take a picture,
which is a more likely user behaviour, but you are right, the handset
lacks a dedicated picture/video editor.
>3. privacy features
>-8 different access locks
>-5 different incoming call restriction
>
>
I would actually argue that this level is clearly not present in all
Japanese-oriented phones. My Sharp handsets have had access locks, but
not 8, and only 3 kinds of call restrictions. But, yes, clearly the
security features of the 802SE are somewhat limited. It is a bit of
non-sequitor, but I was seriously considering suggesting a 'furin' mode
of privacy. The reason I say this is because, despite the many levels of
privacy modes, a knowledgable person (ie wife) could find some fairly
strong evidence of a culprit's (ie husband's) misdeeds if she knew where
to look. On the SH53 and most other Japanese-oriented Sharp models, for
example, you can put a lock on one person, but if an e-mail comes from
that person, there is no restriction on reading it, unless you
separately explicitly save all mails from that person to a special
folder, in which case the sub-display still says that you have an e-mail
from that person, and the mailed history shows in absolutely every case
whom you may have most recently mailed.
>4. one-step access to enable/disable "manner mode", add one more step
>and you have a choice of various combinations of manner mode (sound,
>vibration, recording etc).
>
>
Actually, manner mode is a one-step setting, and in the case of mode
settings, the 802SE is actually pretty good: It has 7 fully configurable
modes, a couple of which are triggered by the presence of a bluetooth
headset.
>I don't know all non-native Japanese handsets, but I tried Nokia 6650,
>Motorola A1000 and the result is more or less the same.
>
>
I think it is clear that in general Japanese handsets have more settings
than their non-Japanese counterparts. I also think that in many cases
these settings don't bring a lot of value to a user. In other cases,
for example a quite simple one, where if you use certain emoji in the
first couple of characters of an e-mail, a cool animated wallpaper is
automatically generated on the handset side, there are brilliant
features that European handset makers should clearly look at.
I think there are clearly issues with user interface, both in Japan and
outside. In Japan, one of the issues is actually *too many* features to
comfortably master for a user. Outside of Japan it is things like
requiring users to set their own e-mail gateways, voicemail numbers,
etc. I am not saying the 802SE is perfect, because it is clearly not.
But it is also, for me as a 'sarariman', the most useful handset I have
used since I have been in Japan (12 years, 9 handsets). It does those
things that I consider important very well: Outlook synchronisation,
appointment reminders, bluetooth headset integration, voice dialing, and
web browsing. It also is easy to test Java midlets on--just load them
onto the Memory card's 'Other' folder and then install them on the
handset from there. Really simple. And it runs MIDP 2.1, with a few
extras, so it is pretty standard to code for it. I know, these things
are probably a lot more important to me than to the average Japanese
user, of whom my wife is a good example: She switched back to her SH-53.
Therein lies the rub...
Best,
Nik
Received on Mon May 30 17:56:43 2005