13 ms·

I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. The Design Of Everyday Things gives examples of gre

I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. The Design Of Everyday Things gives examples of great designs: * Rotary dial phones were designed in such a way that when a phone felled on the floor it not only survived, but the ongoing phone-call was not hanged. Today countless users brake their smartphones glasses and yet the mainstream smartphones to do not incorporate any design elements that would make it harder to drop the phone or that would protect the glass from the impact. Such elements would make the designs less minimal, so are discarded. * Cars, a complex machines that can easily hurt others, traditionally have controls designed in such a way that you can enter a car model that is totally new to you and comfortably operate it within minutes. You can operate most controls without a need of looking away from the road. Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern.

baxtr 9y ago
I don’t know. Isn’t that a matter of trade-offs? Sure smartphones used to have a very long battery life and were more robust in the “good old days”, but they had tiny screens and real keyboards. Even though it never broke when I let it slip, I don’t miss my old blackberry. I can so do so much more with my iPhone today that I am ok with it being less sturdy.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It's always about trade-offs, the question is what are the sides of those trade-off and whether consumers really care about the things being traded in. For instance, I don't believe that durability and large screens are mutually exclusive. Consider a popular phone accessory that is a rubber case. I've been using one to protect my (then) $800 glass piece, and it's totally fine after many drops. In fact, I don't know of people who use such cases and have problems with screen damages. All because it adds an extra impact-absorbing bevel on each side, including above the screen (so the screen isn't hitting the floor even if the phone falls face-first). What's the problem for manufacturers to add such a padding layer? Everyone is dropping battery replaceability anyway. (Also: rubber cases improve grip, so the phone won't slip out of your hand or your pocket that easily.) I feel it's like there is some influential person in the industry who strongly believes that what the customers really want is to get intimate with their phones, to caress their glass surface - that's why there should be no bevel, and if you can't make it all from glass, then make the rest from aluminium. Well, I for one don't want to get touchy-feely with my phone, I want it to stand a decent chance of not breaking when it hits something.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    If you make the phone without the built-in elbow pads, then both the people who prefer it to be thin and attractive and the people who prefer it to be enormous and grippy and bouncy can both be satisfied. Moreover, the latter group can choose from dozens of colors and styles. There exist phones with fat rubberized shells. They sell terribly and have mostly been driven out of the market.
    - pdimitar 9y ago
      Still, the choice should be there for those who prefer the rubber shell phones. And no, devices like the Cat S60 don't really count. They are abandoned basically the moment they leave the factory. It's questionable if you'll see a software update on that device, like ever.
      - macintux 9y ago
        That's the point. There's not enough money to be made catering to a niche market when add-ons can solve the problem. Some of us would like a bulky rubber phone when we're hiking along a rocky stream and a svelte phone when it's in our pocket every day. I can add a protective case to a thin phone much more easily than I can disassemble a bulky phone.
        pdimitar 9y ago
        That's correct and I agree. My pet peeve is casual usage at home. I want to admire my phone's design sometimes without risking to shatter it on my tiled floor. <sighs> Guess every one of us has that "spoiled consumer" part in them.
        macintux 9y ago
        Indubitably.
  - tibbetts 9y ago
    Designing for customization with readily available third party accessories is a design choice, and one that reflects a different consumer products ecosystem than existed in the mid 20th century. I don’t mind starting with a minimalist phone and then adding my own splash of color or protective bevels. And a benefit of this system isn’t just mass customization. I can give a used phone to my mother or my son and they can re-customize it with a new case appropriate to their needs. I have no desire for someone at Apple to take away my choice of case.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Despite having better internals, none of my smart phones have felt as well designed as the original Droid, that had the sliding keyboard, solid metal case, and bevel that did a lot to stop fall damage. My current phone even has a similar size screen to it -- the only feature difference is that my current phone is thinner and every other feature is worse. If anyone knows a smartphone with that style of physical keyboard, rugged style, and good battery please tell me. I'll trash my cheap, thin piece of plastic and buy one instantly!
- tripzilch 9y ago
  > Even though it never broke when I let it slip, I don’t miss my old blackberry. I can so do so much more with my iPhone today that I am ok with it being less sturdy. Point us to a design principle (or anything), that proves these two are mutually exclusive. Defeatist attitude brings nothing to this discussion. What are you looking for, commiseration?
username223 9y ago
> I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. Probably not. The article praises the Google Home "flannel hockey puck," which Google had to remotely cripple because it would randomly wake up and send audio to Google.
jacobolus 9y ago
If you find someone who works on phone design for a modern phone manufacturer, I imagine they can tell you about hundreds of tiny unnoticed design elements which serve to make the phone more robust against falls. I am amazed at how well modern phones withstand falls, e.g. continuing to work after being dropped 6 feet and landing on one corner on a tile floor. I have seen a rotary phone in a thrift store with plastic bits chipped off from a fall, and I imagine there are other phones which never made it to the thrift store because their mechanisms broke after falling. I suspect that given equivalent falls the modern high-end smartphones will withstand them better on average than old Bell phones (especially if you drop the full phone and not just the handset). It would be an interesting test though. But telephone falls weren’t too common 40–100 years ago because they were enormous, attached by a robust cord, and didn’t get carried around in a pocket or purse all the time, held across the fingers while being manipulated with a thumb, or used to take selfies. The best way to make smartphones more robust without compromising other essential attributes is to use stronger materials and a slightly grippier surface finish. The newer Apple phones have reportedly improved along these lines (the one I have is a few years old, so who knows..). For a customer who cares deeply about protection from falls, it’s always possible to wrap one of these things in a thick rubber shell. Extra physical protrusions etc. are discarded from smartphones because they make them much less pleasant to hold in a pocket.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Rotary phones are much, much better at surviving the expected hazards of their intended environment than smartphones. The exact frequency of falls is irrelevant.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    That’s fine, but there’s a significant trade-off. You can still use a Bell phone from 1950 if you want to, but few people are willing to make that sacrifice in other features. Or if you prefer you are welcome to securely strap a rubberized feature phone to your wrist and never worry about dropping it again. For that matter, a toy phone made out of a block of wood is much better at surviving the expected hazards of its intended environment than either of them, but it’s hardly a reasonable substitute.
mrisoli 9y ago
Smartphone design is downright terrible in terms of functionality, they might look nice, but I've had so many phones that were very slippery and didn't offer a firm grip as if the manufacturer says you should buy a case. And Apple is the top offender, think antennagate, headphone jack... That includes software, responsive design was created with the goal of adapting websites to smaller screens, as phones got bigger I don't see many sites utilizing responsive design so that I can still use my phone with one hand. Also, I loved the MagSafe charging port on the MacBook, that is an example of great functionality on design, then Apple throws that out of the window and makes a single port laptop.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  The design is function of the market. People wanted magic not function so they produced magic looking things (thin, shiny). Now people have grown a bit, they'll ask for other values and the production will realign. Waves and spirals
  - duggan 9y ago
    > Waves and spirals Like "swings and roundabouts"? I've never come across this variation.
    - agumonkey 9y ago
      I never saw yours either (is it a common saying ? I'm not a native english speaker anyway, that would explain that).
      - duggan 9y ago
        Common in Britain and Ireland, at least - in context it just seemed like it might be a variation on the same idiom!
        agumonkey 9y ago
        Mine just come from seeing predator/prey graphs https://duckduckgo.com/?q=predator+prey+graph&t=ffsb&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=predator+prey+graph&t=ffsb&iax=ima... and a really weird feeling that, indeed things do roundabouts, but it's not a perfect back-to-start revolution, the soil was raised but the people on it not so much (but they do feel they progressed). A circle that doesn't close properly is a bit a spiral. </math-envy>
GuB-42 9y ago
Tbh, while this article talks about design, it is really just about color. Making keys green instead of black don't change the way they operate. There are some practical reasons for using certain colors, red grabs attention, orange is highly visible, white reflects light and black absorbs and radiates it. However most of it is just a matter of style.
- myoffe 9y ago
  It's not only color. Can you imagine any of the latest Apple products in colors other than variations of white and black (ok, and "gold")?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattacular 9y ago
    The iPhone 5C models with colorful plastic backs were on the market less than 5 years ago. They also make a rose gold iPhone now which isn’t my cup of tea but Apple seems to be opening up to exploring more color options these days.
  - spiralganglion 9y ago
    The Apple Watch bands are pretty diverse in their coloration.
  - selectodude 9y ago
    Sure, I can imagine it in red.
mtgx 9y ago
Apple has started moving slightly in this direction, by creating a plastic cushion layer around the edges of the screen. It probably doesn't help a whole lot, but probably still better than nothing. On the other hand, they decided to make the back out of glass again, so I guess that cancels out that plastic cushion feature. https://youtu.be/n2wJLnNJRHI?t=2m12s https://youtu.be/n2wJLnNJRHI?t=2m12s
sametmax 9y ago
But pretty sells more. And broken even more.
wongarsu 9y ago
Mainstream smartphones are that way because that's what the mainstream market demands. There are smartphones that put function over design (typically marketed as outdoor smartphones). You can absolutely get smartphones that survive falls, have replaceable batteries and sacrifice thinness and screen resolution for better battery life. But thin, magic rectangles that are all screen on every surface sell a lot better.
calinet6 9y ago
Most design in tech hardware prioritizes functionality over look. Just because some colors pop doesn't mean the opposite. The simpler explanation is just that we aren't very good (as an industry) at hardware design look or functionality design right now. We need to get better at both. But making an all-gray phone with no stylistic touches isn't going to re-prioritize functionality, promise you that. Different problem entirely.
squarefoot 9y ago
When friends talk about their new phone costing say €250 I promptly reply: "What? Only 250? You forgot to add the smartphone tax, didn't you?". Now this usually drags immediately their attention, so I can continue: "You should have considered the replacement of a new screen almost every year and a new battery replacement service after 2 or 3 years. ...this is going to cost you over twice that figure if you keep it for say 5 years", while a dumb phone will probably need just one easily replaceable €25 battery after some years.
- rosstex 9y ago
  Weird, I've never done either of those things.
  - squarefoot 9y ago
    It's not just weird, it's super weird. But the fact is that modern smartphones are so much more fragile than their predecessors that this "tax" must be taken into consideration, especially when phones become awfully expensive like nearly everything made by Apple and Samsung in the recent years. Moreover, If I had a minor crash with the car my dumb phone would very likely still be functional for an emergency call (it survived intact a motorcycle accident months ago) while a smartphone would probably become inoperable with a broken screen after the first hit.
mc32 9y ago
Phones were owned by the phone companies and leased out to people, so of course they wanted to make the most durable phones sets.
eropple 9y ago
> yet the mainstream smartphones to do not incorporate any design elements that would make it harder to drop the phone I agree with most of your post, but I don't remember the last phone I had that didn't have a strap loop on it (and I use it). Maybe the iPhone 4?
BatFastard 9y ago
If you want an old style cell phone buy one. I personally think new smart phones are fantastic. Sure it would be nice if battery lasted longer, but I have learned to adapt. Charge your phone every night, carry a back-up battery for long stays away from home. I drop my phone all the time, and it hardly gets a scratch, and this is with no case at all. I personally think they are wonders of modern design. As for design, maybe you have no feel for how far they have come in 10 years.
kbenson 9y ago
If you haven't seen it already, you might find this submission about redesigning the smartphone dial pad [1] interesting, which was posted the other week and goes into the history of the dial pad design a bit. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418832
MBlume 9y ago
We Know SUV Design Kills Pedestrians, But We Still Let Carmakers Sell Them https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/10/19/we-know-suv-design-kills-pedestrians-but-we-still-let-carmakers-sell-them/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/10/19/we-know-suv-design-ki...
woolvalley 9y ago
Smartphones let you customize your protection with cases. If the manufacturer put in awkward bumpers, then you would be stuck with those bumpers.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> You can operate most controls without a need of looking away from the road. Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern. I really don't get this. It's like everyone just forgot that when you're driving a car, you need to be looking through the windshield.
dismantlethesun 9y ago
That's true for some rotary dial phones. Alas, in my house, I had a more ornate model which did away with the plastic guard to prevent phone calls from being cut off[1]. Instead any fall, would depress the place where you hung the phone up, and instantly cut off the on going call. As I remember, even accidentally jostling it by leaning too far onto the desk, could potentially cut off a call. To me, that speaks a timeless truth---expensive and ornate tools are often less functional than their inexpensive peers. Today, expensive smartphones break instantly, but inexpensive ones which thick bezel on 'cheap' glass is resistant to accidental impact. [1]
switch007 9y ago
> Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern. Tell me about it. I realised this had gone too far when Volkswagen moved the headlight angle adjust and dashboard backlight controls to the touchscreen, about 3 levels deep, with a slider. If you are driving at dawn/dusk and suddenly the backlight seems too dim/bright, you need to pull over and do it via the touchscreen. Moronic
- pokemongoaway 9y ago
  I guess those of us who are less resistant to groupthink (i.e. have working faculties) have to be responsible to get into positions of power so we can say, "fuck off" when designers want to take a line of technology and change it because "trend" without additional evidence.
- izacus 9y ago
  For me it was when VW made a huge marketing push about a "hand-waving" feature in their cars. Basically instead of pressing a perfectly serviceable button on your steering wheel, you take your hand off of it and stard waving your fingers in front of the car screen to change volume or similar features. At that point I kinda lost all trust in those people having the faintest clue of what makes for a good UX.
  - tripzilch 9y ago
    whaaat? hand-waving is reserved for communicating with other people and vehicles in traffic!! how did this idea even get past road safety, in particular in jurisdictions where using a phone is illegal
philipov 9y ago
If things were made to avoid breaking, it would reduce the need for people to replace them every 1-2 years. This is what you get if you make maximizing profit margin the only goal of society.
lnanek2 9y ago
> I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. It's actually going the other direction. The fabric phone cover on the Google Daydream causes massive overheating problems. So this is a case of appearance over functionality.
adamlett 9y ago
I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. As soon as we go back to renting our equipment from the telcos, we will get ugly handsets that last forever. Cars, a complex machines that can easily hurt others, traditionally have controls designed in such a way that you can enter a car model that is totally new to you and comfortably operate it within minutes You mean after you’ve received mandatory training and has been certified to operate them?

baxtr 9y ago

I don’t know. Isn’t that a matter of trade-offs? Sure smartphones used to have a very long battery life and were more robust in the “good old days”, but they had tiny screens and real keyboards. Even though it never broke when I let it slip, I don’t miss my old blackberry. I can so do so much more with my iPhone today that I am ok with it being less sturdy.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
It's always about trade-offs, the question is what are the sides of those trade-off and whether consumers really care about the things being traded in. For instance, I don't believe that durability and large screens are mutually exclusive. Consider a popular phone accessory that is a rubber case. I've been using one to protect my (then) $800 glass piece, and it's totally fine after many drops. In fact, I don't know of people who use such cases and have problems with screen damages. All because it adds an extra impact-absorbing bevel on each side, including above the screen (so the screen isn't hitting the floor even if the phone falls face-first). What's the problem for manufacturers to add such a padding layer? Everyone is dropping battery replaceability anyway. (Also: rubber cases improve grip, so the phone won't slip out of your hand or your pocket that easily.) I feel it's like there is some influential person in the industry who strongly believes that what the customers really want is to get intimate with their phones, to caress their glass surface - that's why there should be no bevel, and if you can't make it all from glass, then make the rest from aluminium. Well, I for one don't want to get touchy-feely with my phone, I want it to stand a decent chance of not breaking when it hits something.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  If you make the phone without the built-in elbow pads, then both the people who prefer it to be thin and attractive and the people who prefer it to be enormous and grippy and bouncy can both be satisfied. Moreover, the latter group can choose from dozens of colors and styles. There exist phones with fat rubberized shells. They sell terribly and have mostly been driven out of the market.
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    Still, the choice should be there for those who prefer the rubber shell phones. And no, devices like the Cat S60 don't really count. They are abandoned basically the moment they leave the factory. It's questionable if you'll see a software update on that device, like ever.
    - macintux 9y ago
      That's the point. There's not enough money to be made catering to a niche market when add-ons can solve the problem. Some of us would like a bulky rubber phone when we're hiking along a rocky stream and a svelte phone when it's in our pocket every day. I can add a protective case to a thin phone much more easily than I can disassemble a bulky phone.
      - pdimitar 9y ago
        That's correct and I agree. My pet peeve is casual usage at home. I want to admire my phone's design sometimes without risking to shatter it on my tiled floor. <sighs> Guess every one of us has that "spoiled consumer" part in them.
        macintux 9y ago
        Indubitably.
- tibbetts 9y ago
  Designing for customization with readily available third party accessories is a design choice, and one that reflects a different consumer products ecosystem than existed in the mid 20th century. I don’t mind starting with a minimalist phone and then adding my own splash of color or protective bevels. And a benefit of this system isn’t just mass customization. I can give a used phone to my mother or my son and they can re-customize it with a new case appropriate to their needs. I have no desire for someone at Apple to take away my choice of case.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Despite having better internals, none of my smart phones have felt as well designed as the original Droid, that had the sliding keyboard, solid metal case, and bevel that did a lot to stop fall damage. My current phone even has a similar size screen to it -- the only feature difference is that my current phone is thinner and every other feature is worse. If anyone knows a smartphone with that style of physical keyboard, rugged style, and good battery please tell me. I'll trash my cheap, thin piece of plastic and buy one instantly!
tripzilch 9y ago
> Even though it never broke when I let it slip, I don’t miss my old blackberry. I can so do so much more with my iPhone today that I am ok with it being less sturdy. Point us to a design principle (or anything), that proves these two are mutually exclusive. Defeatist attitude brings nothing to this discussion. What are you looking for, commiseration?

username223 9y ago

> I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. Probably not. The article praises the Google Home "flannel hockey puck," which Google had to remotely cripple because it would randomly wake up and send audio to Google.

jacobolus 9y ago

If you find someone who works on phone design for a modern phone manufacturer, I imagine they can tell you about hundreds of tiny unnoticed design elements which serve to make the phone more robust against falls. I am amazed at how well modern phones withstand falls, e.g. continuing to work after being dropped 6 feet and landing on one corner on a tile floor. I have seen a rotary phone in a thrift store with plastic bits chipped off from a fall, and I imagine there are other phones which never made it to the thrift store because their mechanisms broke after falling. I suspect that given equivalent falls the modern high-end smartphones will withstand them better on average than old Bell phones (especially if you drop the full phone and not just the handset). It would be an interesting test though. But telephone falls weren’t too common 40–100 years ago because they were enormous, attached by a robust cord, and didn’t get carried around in a pocket or purse all the time, held across the fingers while being manipulated with a thumb, or used to take selfies. The best way to make smartphones more robust without compromising other essential attributes is to use stronger materials and a slightly grippier surface finish. The newer Apple phones have reportedly improved along these lines (the one I have is a few years old, so who knows..). For a customer who cares deeply about protection from falls, it’s always possible to wrap one of these things in a thick rubber shell. Extra physical protrusions etc. are discarded from smartphones because they make them much less pleasant to hold in a pocket.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Rotary phones are much, much better at surviving the expected hazards of their intended environment than smartphones. The exact frequency of falls is irrelevant.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  That’s fine, but there’s a significant trade-off. You can still use a Bell phone from 1950 if you want to, but few people are willing to make that sacrifice in other features. Or if you prefer you are welcome to securely strap a rubberized feature phone to your wrist and never worry about dropping it again. For that matter, a toy phone made out of a block of wood is much better at surviving the expected hazards of its intended environment than either of them, but it’s hardly a reasonable substitute.

mrisoli 9y ago

Smartphone design is downright terrible in terms of functionality, they might look nice, but I've had so many phones that were very slippery and didn't offer a firm grip as if the manufacturer says you should buy a case. And Apple is the top offender, think antennagate, headphone jack... That includes software, responsive design was created with the goal of adapting websites to smaller screens, as phones got bigger I don't see many sites utilizing responsive design so that I can still use my phone with one hand. Also, I loved the MagSafe charging port on the MacBook, that is an example of great functionality on design, then Apple throws that out of the window and makes a single port laptop.

agumonkey 9y ago
The design is function of the market. People wanted magic not function so they produced magic looking things (thin, shiny). Now people have grown a bit, they'll ask for other values and the production will realign. Waves and spirals
- duggan 9y ago
  > Waves and spirals Like "swings and roundabouts"? I've never come across this variation.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    I never saw yours either (is it a common saying ? I'm not a native english speaker anyway, that would explain that).
    - duggan 9y ago
      Common in Britain and Ireland, at least - in context it just seemed like it might be a variation on the same idiom!
      - agumonkey 9y ago
        Mine just come from seeing predator/prey graphs https://duckduckgo.com/?q=predator+prey+graph&t=ffsb&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=predator+prey+graph&t=ffsb&iax=ima... and a really weird feeling that, indeed things do roundabouts, but it's not a perfect back-to-start revolution, the soil was raised but the people on it not so much (but they do feel they progressed). A circle that doesn't close properly is a bit a spiral. </math-envy>

GuB-42 9y ago

Tbh, while this article talks about design, it is really just about color. Making keys green instead of black don't change the way they operate. There are some practical reasons for using certain colors, red grabs attention, orange is highly visible, white reflects light and black absorbs and radiates it. However most of it is just a matter of style.

myoffe 9y ago
It's not only color. Can you imagine any of the latest Apple products in colors other than variations of white and black (ok, and "gold")?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mattacular 9y ago
  The iPhone 5C models with colorful plastic backs were on the market less than 5 years ago. They also make a rose gold iPhone now which isn’t my cup of tea but Apple seems to be opening up to exploring more color options these days.
- spiralganglion 9y ago
  The Apple Watch bands are pretty diverse in their coloration.
- selectodude 9y ago
  Sure, I can imagine it in red.

mtgx 9y ago

Apple has started moving slightly in this direction, by creating a plastic cushion layer around the edges of the screen. It probably doesn't help a whole lot, but probably still better than nothing. On the other hand, they decided to make the back out of glass again, so I guess that cancels out that plastic cushion feature. https://youtu.be/n2wJLnNJRHI?t=2m12s https://youtu.be/n2wJLnNJRHI?t=2m12s

sametmax 9y ago

But pretty sells more. And broken even more.

wongarsu 9y ago

Mainstream smartphones are that way because that's what the mainstream market demands. There are smartphones that put function over design (typically marketed as outdoor smartphones). You can absolutely get smartphones that survive falls, have replaceable batteries and sacrifice thinness and screen resolution for better battery life. But thin, magic rectangles that are all screen on every surface sell a lot better.

calinet6 9y ago

Most design in tech hardware prioritizes functionality over look. Just because some colors pop doesn't mean the opposite. The simpler explanation is just that we aren't very good (as an industry) at hardware design look or functionality design right now. We need to get better at both. But making an all-gray phone with no stylistic touches isn't going to re-prioritize functionality, promise you that. Different problem entirely.

squarefoot 9y ago

When friends talk about their new phone costing say €250 I promptly reply: "What? Only 250? You forgot to add the smartphone tax, didn't you?". Now this usually drags immediately their attention, so I can continue: "You should have considered the replacement of a new screen almost every year and a new battery replacement service after 2 or 3 years. ...this is going to cost you over twice that figure if you keep it for say 5 years", while a dumb phone will probably need just one easily replaceable €25 battery after some years.

rosstex 9y ago
Weird, I've never done either of those things.
- squarefoot 9y ago
  It's not just weird, it's super weird. But the fact is that modern smartphones are so much more fragile than their predecessors that this "tax" must be taken into consideration, especially when phones become awfully expensive like nearly everything made by Apple and Samsung in the recent years. Moreover, If I had a minor crash with the car my dumb phone would very likely still be functional for an emergency call (it survived intact a motorcycle accident months ago) while a smartphone would probably become inoperable with a broken screen after the first hit.

mc32 9y ago

Phones were owned by the phone companies and leased out to people, so of course they wanted to make the most durable phones sets.

eropple 9y ago

> yet the mainstream smartphones to do not incorporate any design elements that would make it harder to drop the phone I agree with most of your post, but I don't remember the last phone I had that didn't have a strap loop on it (and I use it). Maybe the iPhone 4?

BatFastard 9y ago

If you want an old style cell phone buy one. I personally think new smart phones are fantastic. Sure it would be nice if battery lasted longer, but I have learned to adapt. Charge your phone every night, carry a back-up battery for long stays away from home. I drop my phone all the time, and it hardly gets a scratch, and this is with no case at all. I personally think they are wonders of modern design. As for design, maybe you have no feel for how far they have come in 10 years.

kbenson 9y ago

If you haven't seen it already, you might find this submission about redesigning the smartphone dial pad [1] interesting, which was posted the other week and goes into the history of the dial pad design a bit. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418832

MBlume 9y ago

We Know SUV Design Kills Pedestrians, But We Still Let Carmakers Sell Them https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/10/19/we-know-suv-design-kills-pedestrians-but-we-still-let-carmakers-sell-them/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/10/19/we-know-suv-design-ki...

woolvalley 9y ago

Smartphones let you customize your protection with cases. If the manufacturer put in awkward bumpers, then you would be stuck with those bumpers.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> You can operate most controls without a need of looking away from the road. Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern. I really don't get this. It's like everyone just forgot that when you're driving a car, you need to be looking through the windshield.

dismantlethesun 9y ago

That's true for some rotary dial phones. Alas, in my house, I had a more ornate model which did away with the plastic guard to prevent phone calls from being cut off[1]. Instead any fall, would depress the place where you hung the phone up, and instantly cut off the on going call. As I remember, even accidentally jostling it by leaning too far onto the desk, could potentially cut off a call. To me, that speaks a timeless truth---expensive and ornate tools are often less functional than their inexpensive peers. Today, expensive smartphones break instantly, but inexpensive ones which thick bezel on 'cheap' glass is resistant to accidental impact. [1]

switch007 9y ago

> Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern. Tell me about it. I realised this had gone too far when Volkswagen moved the headlight angle adjust and dashboard backlight controls to the touchscreen, about 3 levels deep, with a slider. If you are driving at dawn/dusk and suddenly the backlight seems too dim/bright, you need to pull over and do it via the touchscreen. Moronic

pokemongoaway 9y ago
I guess those of us who are less resistant to groupthink (i.e. have working faculties) have to be responsible to get into positions of power so we can say, "fuck off" when designers want to take a line of technology and change it because "trend" without additional evidence.
izacus 9y ago
For me it was when VW made a huge marketing push about a "hand-waving" feature in their cars. Basically instead of pressing a perfectly serviceable button on your steering wheel, you take your hand off of it and stard waving your fingers in front of the car screen to change volume or similar features. At that point I kinda lost all trust in those people having the faintest clue of what makes for a good UX.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  whaaat? hand-waving is reserved for communicating with other people and vehicles in traffic!! how did this idea even get past road safety, in particular in jurisdictions where using a phone is illegal

philipov 9y ago

If things were made to avoid breaking, it would reduce the need for people to replace them every 1-2 years. This is what you get if you make maximizing profit margin the only goal of society.

lnanek2 9y ago

> I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. It's actually going the other direction. The fabric phone cover on the Google Daydream causes massive overheating problems. So this is a case of appearance over functionality.

adamlett 9y ago

I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look. As soon as we go back to renting our equipment from the telcos, we will get ugly handsets that last forever. Cars, a complex machines that can easily hurt others, traditionally have controls designed in such a way that you can enter a car model that is totally new to you and comfortably operate it within minutes You mean after you’ve received mandatory training and has been certified to operate them?