10 ms·
The Nokia N9 Alarm Clock (2014)
- Rerarom 8y agoThis is from 2014. The Android alarm clock now has roughly the same design.
- ajross 8y agoExactly. I read through this thinking "But... Google basically cloned this about three years ago..."
- nextos 8y agoSomehow, but the end user experience is very different. I own both an N9, which I still use as an alarm clock, and a Pixel. The N9 alarm clock is incredibly smooth, and intuitive. You never over or underturn clock hands. Whereas I have seen lots of people, particularly my dad, struggling with the Android counterpart. The N9 was an incredibly well designed product in most respects. I particularly miss the small screen with a curved glass that integrated so well with single-hand gestures (up to minimize app, down to close, left and right to move to next or previous window-card). Maemo/MeeGo are, in some ways, the BeOS of the mobile world.
- nickpeterson 8y agoI like to imagine an alternate reality where Nokia, Rim, and Palm combined.
- z3t4 8y agoImagine if Microsoft would have embraced Meego instead of killing it, and focused more on business and quality apps. If you see a large wave, you should surf it, not try to make it change direction. But sometimes you have to make the wave, way out in the ocean where it will barely be noticed, but once it hits shallow water everyone else will be caught off guard.
- robocat 8y agoI disagree. The only similarity the Android UX has is trying to use an analogue face. When setting a new alarm Android prompts for the hours and then prompts the minutes. The flow is really whacko if you make a mistake. Your certainly are not setting both at once, and it isn't easy to edit. 2. The hours are a twenty four hour clock, and I regularly set an alarm for 4am when I mean 4pm. 3. After adding a new alarm it gets lost in the list I would guess Android gets the daylight saving stuff correct that he mentioned, but did you test it?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DeepYogurt 8y agoFor what it's worth I had an n9 and I did not particularly like the alarm clock design. Most of the UI felt somehow wrong to me.
- angott 8y agoIt's crazy how similar this was to the new Clock app introduced in iOS 10 (2016).
- billfruit 8y agoWhat I find is that most alarm clock apps do not have features like to wake up to radio(FM/streaming), wake up to a preset/randomized playlist or podcasts, gradual increase in alarm volume(android stock app allows a volume ramp up, but its ramping duration is too short).
- rakoo 8y ago> wake up to radio(FM/streaming) It's probably not feasible from an alarm clock app but rather from a radio app: I have found happiness for this use case with radiodroid (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.programmierecke.radiodroid2&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.programmie...)
- JetSpiegel 8y ago> It's probably not feasible from an alarm clock app It can trigger an arbitrary intent.
- dsego 8y agoMy wife's Xiaomi phone has some woman speaking Chinese every morning (not sure what she's saying, we don't speak it), which reminds me, need to find a way to turn it off.
- skripp 8y agoShe's telling you the time and weather. Depending on the circumstances she will add some tips like "Put on sunscreen", "bring an umbrella" or "put on a mask to protect against pollution". First time I heard the latter one I was like "I'm living in one of these dystopian sci-fi films I love so much...". edit: To get rid of it, just change the alarm sound. It's nothing special, just one of the options.
- yegle 8y agoThis is a supported feature on Google's Clock app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.deskclock https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... You can trigger a Google Assistant routine including turn on the lights, report the weather and start playing podcasts.
- wl 8y agoManipulating dials on displays is not good design, whether it's with a mouse or on a touchscreen.
- dmix 8y agoHow so? The various “circle” alarms on the App Store all have very high ratings and millions of downloads. So it works great for countless people. I have found a faster way to set both hour and minutes for an alarm than two short circular motions. Do you have a better design?
- CharlesW 8y agoThey aren't necessarily good design, but affordances are often useful in Human-Computer Interaction.
- tuukkah 8y agoI can see how it's flawed with a mouse, but why is it bad design on a touchscreen? I haven't seen a better time picker.
- disqard 8y agoI think the comment is getting at the fact that a knob/dial actually has a physical affordance (being grabbed and twisted), which is absent on a smooth glass surface. Hence, aiming to create interactive dials on a touchscreen is an inherently challenging endeavor.
- 8y ago
- ausjke 8y agowas searching for an alarm clock for school age kids: 1. no cellphone based alarm, they will abuse it if cellphone is in bedroom sometimes. 2. no $15 dollar alarm clock from Walmart, which you have one setting for Mon-Fri, another one for Sat-Sun, but you have to manually switch them on Friday/Sunday night otherwise you will be waked up at a wrong time. Is there a smart alarm clock, not smart as an Android phone, but smarter than the legacy models? Our calendar/alarm varies more these days and I need find an alarm in the middle of legacy and cellphone.
- ausjke 8y agono alexa or any of those cloud thingy, need use it when power is off or there is no internet
- ausjke 8y agofor the down-voter: I ask a genuine question, not perfect for this thread but nothing offensive either, unless you're keen on voting up many posts, you probably do not need vote down so easily for things like this, as it irritates people _unnecessarily_ which is unwise if you're already an adult. If you found you're policing this place by downvoting way more than you ever upvoted, then you probably have a mental disorder, and you may be more likely to suffer from depression, as you're simply too negative.
- sctb 8y ago> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- VectorLock 8y agoIf I was going to downvote or flag your comments it would be because your question seems related to the post in the the most tangental way possible then you start making accusations about someones mental health that you have zero knowledge about because you got down-voted.
- baby 8y agoThis makes me think of the "bed time" iOS clock which is confusing me every time I try to use it.
- koala_man 8y agoTo me, the time of day is four digits counting up. The Android version of this instead makes me choose two points on three concentric circles (am+pm+minutes). It's neither helpful, useful, nor familiar. If someone wanted you to enter phone numbers this way to mimic rotary dials, they would be laughed out of the room.
- Synaesthesia 8y agoThe circular thumb rotation is pretty quick for picking, think of an ipod wheel.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoI completely agree. I'm not sure if there is a word for this, but I think of it as "design should match the way your brain says it". I.e. may brain says "6:15 AM", and I imagine that in my head exactly how I write it, not some weird combination of circular dials. In fact, when I see those weird combinations of circular dials on the Android clock I always feel like I need to "translate" between my mental vision of seeing "6:15 AM" and rotating an unintuitive dial.
- jfim 8y agoMight be an age thing, but the circular dial is completely intuitive if you've learned how to read an analog clock at a young age. Unlike the widget described in the article, it doesn't snap in 5 minute increments for the minutes, which makes it a bit more finnicky, but otherwise 6:15 am is just a tap at 6 (south) and 15 (east).
- ge0rg 8y agoThe Android widget is a huge design fail. If you accidentally touch the wrong hour, or get into PM instead of AM, you have no way to correct. It became bearable to use once I forced myself to always swipe the hours and minutes until it read the right value, and to lift the finger then. It's still not as bad as the Samsung and iOS vertical dial with 60 options, though. My old Symbian phone (pre touch) allowed to just type the desired alarm time on the keyboard. I could blindly set an alarm. Those were the times...
- kurthr 8y agoNext, can I have a microwave oven that has just 2 dials? Time & Power
- unicornporn 8y agoI've recently bought two different cheap ones. They're both like that. Nothing but power and time. Timer is mechanical. I much prefer this UX over more cumbersome and expensive ones.
- robaato 8y agoAmen!
- NullPrefix 8y agoIt's difficult to show you the relevant ads when you don't even have a screen.
- Geee 8y agoAre there microwave ovens with ads?
- RandomBacon 8y agoThere are gas pumps with ads, operating systems with ads, eReaders with ads... it's only a matter of time.
- unicornporn 8y agoHa, comic gold (because there's truth to it)!
- fxbl0i 8y agoOf course you can... The cheap ones are like that. I remember having one of the digital ones too, and the UX was terrible (took me a few days to understand it). It had like 12 buttons of which you only needed to use 3 or so. It also had a speaker that would beep every time I pressed a button, and it was LOUD, I felt like I was waking up the entire neighbourhood every time I microwaved something in the middle of the night. If I had to choose an adjective to describe the entire affair it would be "stupid".
- m4rtink 8y agoSailfish OS had the same alarm clock widget since lauch (~2015), which is not surprising given that many ex-Nokia people who worked on the N9 created the Jolla company and started Sailfish OS. In any case this is how it looks like on my Sony Xperia X running officially supported Sailfish OS 3: https://imgur.com/a/oNZgORn https://imgur.com/a/oNZgORn
- Gravityloss 8y agoI found the alarm clock quite annoying to use. Usually I want to set an exact time. A slider, be it round or linear, is better suited to tuning something while watching for feedback. That's how faders are used on physical sound mixers as well. You slide it until you hear what you want. On Meego switching between apps was way way smoother than android though.
- bruxis 8y agoWhat an interestingly different interpretation from my own experience. I found the ability to have two dials like this made it extremely easy to jump to a quartile of time (say 0-3 hour mark, 0-15 minutes) and then precisely tune in on the exact hour or minute. I wish more UI was this intuitive and powerful. The time selector on iOS (haven't used Android in a quick minute) is absolutely dreadful by comparison.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoSorry to kindof hijack - I was just about to "Ask HN" but failed - my post would show as regular submission rather than Ask. So I'm posting my question here instead. Modern Android devices are becoming useless for me, as they won't connect to my car hi-fi nor Linux (neither as mass storage nor MTP device - what a clusterfuck). All I really need is a browser, email client, local storage, MP3 (no streaming), and maybe navigation. Preferably not a large phablet. A good touch display is a plus. Doesn't have to be cheap. Does anybody know of a decent device doing the above, and nothing else?
- bArray 8y agoHmm, possibly the WiPhone could be of interest: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-phone-for-hackers-and-makers https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-ph... It doesn't do everything you need, but it certainly has the potential to if you are willing to put the time in.
- Nition 8y agoI wondered why my old article was suddenly getting new comments. I guess someone saw my comment yesterday[1]. A few notes: - This should have a [2014] tag. - The Nokia N9 was released in 2011. There are indeed some other clocks like this now. A subset of them are explicitly copying the N9. - To those complaining about the dial interface, you often don't have to turn the dials. Since it snaps to the nearest five minutes when you tap, you can set your alarm in two taps. You do have to spin the dial around to change a.m. to p.m. though. With the slight vibration as you turn, it feels better on a touchscreen than you might think. - Yes Sailfish has a similar implementation. I used a Jolla Sailfish phone after my N9 until I eventually broke it. Then I used Sailfish on an Xperia X but the phone was just too big. There are no Sailfish phones that I can put in my pocket now; I'm currently using an old iPhone 5C. The vertical scrolly-dial alarm clock interface sucks. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19595938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19595938
- Lammy 8y agoWhat about the Xperia X Compact? It’s supported too.
- Nition 8y agoIt's not officially supported. That and I just don't want to pay for another new phone. Official support right now is: - Xperia X, Xperia XA2, Xperia XA2 Plus, Xperia XA2 Ultra. I have seen that there is some community support for the Xperia X Compact though. The newest Sony "compact", the XZ2 Compact, is almost as large as the original Xperia X now too. Galaxy S10+: 158 x 74 mm Xperia X: 143 x 69 mm Xperia XZ2 Compact: 135 x 65 mm Xperia X Compact: 129 x 65 mm iPhone SE: 124 x 59 mm Nokia N9: 117 x 61 mm I think the perfect phone for me would be an N9/iPhone SE size phone with an iPhone X-style borderless screen and Meego or Sailfish OS.
- m4rtink 8y agoXperia X Compact is not officially supported, but a member of the community created a patcher that turns the official Xperua X Sailfish OS image into one you can use for X compact: https://github.com/g7/sailfishx-patcher-f5321 https://github.com/g7/sailfishx-patcher-f5321 After that all works, including OTA uogrades. A friend of mine flashed such a patched Sailfish OS image on his X compact and AFAIK all works fine for him. :)
- Bud 8y agoI actually see various aspects of this with rather poor design. The most glaring thing is the minute hand on the clock, which is so thin as to be nearly invisible. This is made worse by it being white on a light-grey background, and even worse by the fact that its shape doesn't match with the hour hand, which has rounded ends. This is a very hard clock to read. The three hands also don't give the impression that they rotate around a common center point. The day-of-week indicator is also tiny, and hard to read, again because of the mixed greys. 50% grey displayed on a background of around 30% grey isn't elegant; it's just hard to read. The indicator for which day(s) of the week the alarm is set is even worse; nearly invisible.
- agumonkey 8y agothis is where android is ultra lame.. the amount of papercuts for the mundane tasks..
- Sharlin 8y agoI'm still angry that internal politicking at Nokia killed Meego. The N9, in 2011, seriously felt like a phone that had arrived from the future, or another timeline where everything is more elegant than in ours. Nokia simply should not have been able to come up with a phone with such polished user experience. But they did, and then they threw it away and instead bet on a completely wrong horse.
- profalseidol 8y agoMust be the incentive to innovate.
- tambourine_man 8y agoI’ve used something like this on recent cheap Androids and it’s a bad idea. I had to help the person setting it up and it took a while to understand it myself. You have to consider that right before falling asleep a person is not at their top cognitive capacity. And waking up on time can be really freaking important. So don’t get smart with alarm clocks.
- greenice 8y ago> And of course, you can turn the phone off at night and it still turns itself on in the morning for the alarm. I have missed this feature ever since smartphones became popular. How come this isn't a standard feature of each smartphone by now? Are there any technical limitations?
- Nition 8y agoThe top answer here has some info re hardware support: https://together.jolla.com/question/174903/alarm-doesnt-wake-up-xperia-x-sailfish-x https://together.jolla.com/question/174903/alarm-doesnt-wake... I also miss it, as I use my phone as my alarm but there's no other reason for me to leave it on at night.
- fowl2 8y agoDnD/Quiet Mode has basically supplanted "off".
- exadeci 8y agoThe cpu needs to be able to support it, mediatek smartphone have it I think.
- teddyh 8y ago“Edison, an off switch!” “She’ll get years for that. Off switches are illegal.” — Max Headroom, season 1, episode 6: “The Blanks”, 1987
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoI loved my Nokia N9. Everything about the UI felt really good. I would switch back if they refreshed the hardware, app support be damned. Although, now that Android and iOS integrate so many more swipe gestures, it's possible the advantages would be less pronounced. I know most of the same developers went onto make Sailfish, but I've tried that and the UI doesn't feel nearly as good. :(
- joecool1029 8y ago> Everything about the UI felt really good. It wasn't just the software UI, but the hardware felt good and gestures felt natural on the device. It was the first time I used a phone and felt like the hardware and software were made for each other from the start. iOS and Android phones always felt like they were incrementally trying to get there, but never started there. Everything since has sucked for usability.
- Nition 8y agoThe way the screen curved and flowed smoothly into the rounded edges worked particularly well with the swipe-based interface (namely the edge swipes).
- distances 8y ago> I know most of the same developers went onto make Sailfish, but I've tried that and the UI doesn't feel nearly as good. :( I still wish the best for Sailfish, but it was such a disappointment when the first device was released. I had preordered it as I loved the N9 so much, but the beauty and functionality of the UI was sadly lost. I used Sailfish for a month maybe, at which point I was convinced that it just won't be going very far without a UI/UX revamp.
- Geee 8y agoAlso, what was going on with the tactile feedback on the N9? Pressing the virtual keys felt almost real. I've not touched anything similar since then.
- ahartmetz 8y agoLow latency maybe? High latency is my user interface pet peeve... You can't see it in a designer's portfolio, you can't see it directly in the code, few reviews measure it, but it makes everything feel unsatisfying to use.
- distances 8y agoThis is still one of my pet peeves on non-N9 devices. There's a device that got it right, and it's still not copied over. N9 truly was a beauty when it came out. Of course it's a bit underwhelming now with the dated hardware, but I the UI (and tactile feedback..) still holds up after all these years.
- amiga-workbench 8y agoI think its got a linear actuator inside instead of a vibrator motor, you can feel so much of the UI.
- abdulmuhaimin 8y agoMeego could actually succeed if Nokia continue their support. Instead,they pull their life before it hit the market. And boy, did it do great. N9 to me was like when first iPhone was introduced, such a revolutionary phone. I always wonder what the alternate reality is if Nokia continued with Meego instead of Windows Phone. I know there are Sailfish OS, but the support needed is huge for a new OS when Android and iOS already dominated the market, and they cant carry them forward. Even in modern mobile OS, although they improved, the UX is not as intuitive as Nokia N9.
- ZuLuuuuuu 8y agoI was a fan of Nokia N9, I used it for a year and I absolutely loved it. It was ahead of its time that's for sure. BUT, I am not sure whether Meego would have been the better choice over Windows for Nokia. Creating a 3rd ecosystem requires more than having a better OS. If you check out Windows Phone reviews, it was also a very good OS. Windows was more cross-platform than Meego as well. It was ready for phones as well as tablets and wearables. And it is already the most popular OS on desktop. It was backed by the giant Microsoft with enormous resources as well as Nokia's resources. There were a lot of developers who were familiar with Windows development (C# + XAML) ...And despite all these advantages, even Windows couldn't become the 3rd ecosystem and thrown the towel after years. And the problem was not the OS itself, it was the lack of apps. Big names simply didn't bring their apps to a third platform. So I think Meego would have gone nowhere even if Nokia chose it over Windows. Of course we can't know for sure...
- lucb1e 8y agoSo like most Android ones these days? I don't find any of these features special. The only noteworthy difference is that the clock is not shown on my current alarms screen and I'm happy to be able to have the extra screen real estate as I have dozens if not hundreds of alarms so I don't have to set it every day again but can just scroll down to the right time and flip a few switches.
- fortunajs 8y agoI'm still wondering why when setting an alarm clock on locked screen iPhone by swiping up and opening the app from Control Center there is a lock icon instead of current time.
- divan 8y agoThis. After using Nokia N9 (and Nokia N950) for 1.5 years and switching back then to iOS, I almost couldn't believe how crappy iOS alarm experience was (and still is!) in contrast to the overall polished UI. I also enjoyed a lot the swipe based navigation between screens and closing apps by swiping them app – this concept was so much ahead of it's time. Now it's in iOS and Android as well. Whoever worked on Meego/Harmattan UI – you are geniuses. Just know that your work was very much appreciated even if underrated by mainstream.
- codeulike 8y agoThe Android (v9) alarm clock is somewhat like this, Hour and Minute are selected with two nested rotary dials.