Daddy's new toy 2017

I did get my new toy on Friday and it is awesome. As I described a few days ago, this is the year for hardware to shine. The awesomeness of the S8 (S8+ in my case) is impossible to either explain by text or even photos. The user experience is beyond text or still photo. The tactile feel of the glass front and back, the practically seemless flow of glass and frame, the soft edges and curves, the image quality of the screen, and the responsiveness of the processor culminate to an experience that doesn't translate into text or photo.

My new all black phone came 10 years 1 month and 1 day after I added a black theme to my website (for the Rock subdomain, here). It was the fifth and final theme, the only one I've added any content to since then. I've wanted an all black phone to match and gotten closest with the Note 4, but this S8+ is surely the best yet. Also remember my post in September 2014 for the inevitable cell phone design, here, where I described the ultimate design being one that made the device look like it was just a single, solid, piece of glass. Here's a photo of it on my kitchen counter, a closer up image of it on a table, and then how it looks on my car dashboard. Visually it fits the description.

Of course for demonstration purposes I had the Always on Display off, which I normally keep on and find very useful. And FYI, the vent clip I use for my phone in my car is from iKross and is the only valid style of car vent mount on the market, here, because it can be used one handed. I seriously don't understand why there are no copycats out there.

Not only is the phone itself all black, but Samsung allows us to theme it, and no surprise, I picked an all black one. This way the software and the hardware look like they were made for each other.

And while I was at it, here's a photo of how big the screen is. It may or may not look like it in a photo, but in person, this is huge.

To quantify some of the radical hardware upgrade, here's a couple numbers. The S8+ has a physical body 0.8% bigger than the iPhone 7+ but has 12.7% more screen. That's huge. For anyone still holding on to Samsung's battery problems in last fall's Note 7, don't forget Apple has had their share of problems, too. The iPhone 4 antenna made Apple the laughingstock of the industry for a while (here), and they've recently had their own battery issues (here). I'm not really trying to pick on the iPhone, just using them as a comparison since iPhone is the single best selling smartphone in the world (and Android is the single most popular operating system in the world of smartphones).

Earlier in April I was wondering how many times a day I check my phone. The question is in the context of amortizing the cost of the phone over a one year period. I installed an app and found over the last 2 weeks I've checked my phone an average of 75 times per day. If we say we can allocate a penny per check, then over 365 days that's $274. 2¢ would be 548, 3¢ = $822, and 4¢ = $1,095. Similarly (yet opposite) since this phone will cost me $420 a year and I check it 75 times a day, then that's 1.6¢ per check. If you only paid $200 for your phone but only check it 20 times a day, then you're paying 2.7¢ per check. If you pay $200 but only check it 4 times a day, you're paying a whopping 14¢ per check. So while my phone is expensive, I get my use out it.

I do love the feel of glass front and glass back phone. In the case of the S8+, the glass on the back is too thin, causing it feel like plastic. It should probably be an extra half millimeter thicker. It's so obvious I noticed the first time I picked it up out of the box. That was Friday, and Monday I found a CNET article that essentially confirmed it, here. When I showed another techie friend the first thing they said was it felt like plastic. I think making the back have as good of glass as the front would be worth any extra thickness. The S7 felt great, the S8 (or now the S9) should too.

By the way, I was pleased to see that another manufacturer has embraced the design style that Apple started with the all black iPhone 7 and Samsung followed with the S8. A company called Xiaomi is releasing a phone called the MI6 that looks beautiful. It's out in China this week and in the US in May. I've never heard of them, but this looks awesome. Especially if the price tag is less than $400 like some websites claim: here. It's not waterproof, but I like the idea of an Android phone that looks this good and is half the price of the S8. Not for myself but for consumer choice.

The biggest missing feature from both iPhone 7 and S7

I'm a fan of consumer choice. When Samsung pushed the envelope of big phones I rejoiced. I have big hands and my eyes sometimes want something bigger to look at. The iPhone set the standard in 2007 with a 3.5 inch diagonal screen. In 2010 the iPhone 4 was arguably the best design of their 3.5" models. In 2012 Samsung released their Galaxy S3 at 4.8" diagonal. It was huge. In 2011 they released the Note, the biggest phone on the market, with a 5.3" diagonal. I love the big screen, but it's ridiculous that big should preclude small.

In 2014 Apple caved and the iPhone 6 was big. The 6 Plus was even bigger. Samsung's latest S8 and S8+ are their biggest yet. But why have both these companies stopped making small phones? If they make the regular and a plus size, how about a mini? Especially Samsung who makes an "active" version of their flagship phone, and the "J" cheaper versions.

Not everyone has big hands and wants to watch movies on their phones, therfore not everyone wants big phones. I've seen advertisements for bras that were designed with pockets to fit those cute little iPhones. How many women in the world are or would prefer to walk around with neither purse nor pockets? Answer: a lot. But they should have a phone with them. (You should especially agree with that statement if you make a living making or selling phones.) How many people have small or medium sized hands? Answer: a lot. When you double the size of the phone, you make it harder for most women to carry it directly on their body, and even uncomfortable to use. Come on Apple and Samsung (and every other manufacturer) add an iPhone 8 Mini and Galaxy S8 Mini as part of your standard product line from now on.

As an example, here's a photo of my hand and my wife's:

And while we're on the topic of size, let's point out that both iOS and Android still look the same on 3.5" screens and on 6" screens. The standard method of handling this is just to display at higher resolution. Can the operating systems please catch up and scale better, with an option to make everything on the home screen smaller? Namely, fit more icons and use smaller fonts, and in the case of Android, make sure the widgets scale proportionally too? Because while some of us buy big phones because our eyes are getting older and we need bigger text, none the less for the rest of us big icons and big text is what we do for toddlers and children. Big kids and grown ups can read small print. Now, I'm a fan of consumer choice, so make sure there is an option for scaling, don't just change the default.

All Black

The natural state of paper is white (or light) so naturally the highest contrast ink is black. Reinforced by the fact that the easiest ink to make is black (as opposed to the opposite, which is white, or a random color like red or blue). Because ink is a manifestation of color, or pigment. Blend all the colors together and you get black, because pigment is subtractive.

Image credit: Adobe

The natural state of a computer screen is black, so naturally the highest contrast pixels will output white. Because pixels outout light. When they're off, no light means darkness (black). Blend all the colors together and you get white, because light is additive. (Interesting link explaining the difference.)

Image credit: Adobe

On a piece of paper, anything not white is supposed to be there to be processed by your brain and interpreted as either information (meaning) to be communicated, or aesthetics to convey branding, style, and other feeling/ perception. On a digital screen, anything not black should fit the same description. Screens are the opposite of paper for the fundamental reason (physics) described above. Too much software these days is made either ignoring this principle or pandering to customers who think it's too complicated.

Devices that are all screen, like TVs, tablets, and smartphones, should be built with all black bodies. I don't mean some cheap looking dull grayish blackish frame, I mean dark black that harmonizes well with the screen when it's off. This is because the device is nothing more than a carrier. The device, the hardware, is meant to be a comfortable pleasing input. The screen (the software) is the only output, therefore the only thing that should be specifically designed to attract attention. Like the old saying that a child should be seen and not heard (meaning they should be present in the company of adults but well behaved so as to not interrupt the peaceful conversation of the adults). A well manored child will receive high praise for successfully doing what they're supposed to, even without them doing their best to attract attention. Similarly, the hardware of a device that is all screen should get its praise by quietly doing what is needed without demanding its own attention. If the designer does their job well, the unassuming black device will earn plenty of praise.

For tablets and phones, the most impressive user experience will be when the device feels like it's just all one piece of material. Since the best screens are glass, it makes sense that the whole thing be glass. If that's not sturdy enough then just the front and back should be glass. The iPhone 4 and Galaxy S7, S8, and Tab S3 fit these descriptions. May they not be the last.

Images credit: Apple
Left: model 4, right: model 7

Once the device is designed to blend in with the screen when it's off, we may ask how to make the screen blend with the device when its on. The way to do this is with dark themed apps that exploit the properties of light and ignore the concepts of pigment. The user should always have choice to customize to their personal style, but to demonstrate design excellence the device should come standard with backgrounds that help fool the user into thinking the device is all one solid, strong piece of material. Apple made some cool backgrounds with their iPhone 7 (including the blue blob). May these inspire many more.

   

Images credit: Apple

The reason not just any black background will do is we must show of the awesomeness of the display (the screen). This isn't the 1980s and we're not running 640x480 with 50 pixels per inch and using dot matrix printers. It's almost 2020 and a good display these days rivals the quality of a laser printer. Laser printers output at 600 dots per inch and a good phone has at least 200. (Microsoft Windows still assumes all desktop monitors are running at 72 pixels per inch.) The iPhone 7+ has 400 and the Galaxy S7 has 575 pixels per inch. The stock wallpapers (including live wallpapers) should show this off in all its glory with ultra high resolution and high detail photography that harmonizes with the physical device beautifully. The Apple fighting fish, blue blob, and purple flower (from the iPhone 6) are great examples. OK world, let's see some more :)

Image credit: Apple

For example, Motorola, maker of the flip phone that rocked the the world (the Razr) and the insanely thin Moto Z Droid (a whopping 26% thinner than the iPhone 6 but the same 5.5" screen size), how awesome of a device could you make if you took these design principles just a little more seriously? Good luck to us all.

The year hardware finally blew software out of the water

For a long as the computer had existed our imaginations have exceeded our capacity to express it. When the personal computer came around in the 1980s, Steve Jobs was one of the first to realize that computers could (and should) display text in more than one font.  Displays running 640x480 pixels at a ridiculously low pixels-per-inch were the standard for over a decade.  Then the Pentium set new standards with 1024x768 displays and Windows 95 entered a new era of visual computing.  The world wide web connected us like never before and experienced a revolution of it's own when Steve Jobs again rocked the world with the iPhone. (Remember a wide screen iPod, a phone, and a revolutionary internet device, on YouTube here.)  iOS and Android made us drool over our phones, but the software continued to press the envelope of what was possible given the available hardware. And the hardware was usually dumb looking.  It rarely looked like technology of the future.  The iPhone 4, the iPhone 6 and exceedingly rare other devices were worthy of science fiction writing from the 20th century.

I saw this year's model of Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3 at the store today.  It is beautiful.  It puts an iPad to shame.  It was clearly designed by the same company that made the S8 (set for release 2 weeks from today, I preordered it tonight).

It's impossible to explain how glorious it feels and looks.  The feel of matching glass on front and back is just amazing.  The nuance of how they made the side frame metal and match the color and tone of the glass makes for a wonderful unibody appearance that exceeds the iPad because it affords the strength of metal on the edge and the look, sheen, and feel of glass on the front and back.  It truly looks like something that is a work of science fiction, like something that jumped right of the screen from Tron Legacy or Star Trek.  (iPad's curved back may make it easy to pick up off a table, but that's the end of the pros.)

Running more than full HD and 9.7 inches diagonal with an HDR display and four built in speakers, and a processor that delivers silky smooth graphics (I don't even care what the processors is, it delivers) this thing pumps out the sensory experience to the max (for a tablet).  But it's running Android.  Not that I dislike Android, I like it better than iOS and to an extent Windows.  But for a piece of hardware like this, Android 7 visually presents the experience of a child's toy from the early 2000's.  iOS would too if you somehow forced it on there, and so would Windows.  Now that our hardware has almost caught up to my design expectations (both the S8 phone and this S3 tablet) it's time for someone to theme Android in such a way that the OS lives up to the hardware.  A game that hardware manufactures have been playing catch-up on for a decade and this year finally took the upper hand.  At least Samsung has.  Now we'll see if anyone else follows suit.

Image credits: Samsung

Design Delays

Samsung has gotten a lot of criticism for what they did with the fingerprint sensor. In the S7 it is on the home button, but the S8 has only a virtual button and is near bezel less, so it had to move. Putting it on the back is logical next best option, but their choice baffles most of us. Here's what it really looks like.

The problems are (a) the fingerprint sensor is right next to the camera lense and (b) it's still small (just rotated 90° from the S7). Now I don't know what is under the hood and what challenges they faced in moving this sensor, but it can be done differently. Here's how LG did it.

I can see not wanting to copy or be accused of copying. So how about this?

This design will take care of both criticisms A and B above, and would make the fingerprint sensor be in the better place for us right handed people who hold our phones with our left hand. My pessimistic hypothesis is they've already thought of this and are just waiting for the S9 to do it. The current state may just get annoying enough after a year that people will upgrade just because of it.

In the same vein, I've wondered why the iPhone doesn't have wireless charging yet. My pessimistic hypothesis is Apple is developing a new wireless charging standard that's incompatible with existing standards but works as good and allows them to continue selling proprietary chargers. Sure, they'll claim it's some percentage better than the industry standard, but that wasn't the point, it wasn't about helping the consumer, it's about market control. I don't have to respect that.

Remember my post from Sept 2014 about the inevitable cell phone design...