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- I'm not American. I don't upgrade my phone every year, but when I do the old one usually gets handed over to a family member. I think this is quite common, al

by gnaffle 14y ago

- I'm not American. I don't upgrade my phone every year, but when I do the old one usually gets handed over to a family member. I think this is quite common, although some may sell it for a price depending on the age of the phone. - Turning off WiFi, GPS and bluetooth, you get quite a bit of battery life out of an iPhone. - I can only answer for the people I've met who are non-technical. They had no problem using an old Nokia phone to make calls, but for everything else (including contact lists and SMS) the iPhone is easier. The only usability problems I've discovered has to do with the buttons, as they don't discover what the sleep/wake button and silent/ringer button does, and because they think the Home button is an "end whatever you're doing" button, which makes them push that button to end a call (this of course doesn't work since it just returns to the home screen with the call backgrounded). Since I'm curious, what was your mother struggling with? - The iPhone hardware has a tendency to last a long time unless the display breaks. My mothers phone is from 2009, for instance. Although I agree that replacing the battery is a problem since you have to know someone with a screwdriver or pay to have it replaced.

bad_user 14y ago
I don't really know why my mom struggled with it, but I guess it's because of the tree-like interface, and because normal users are used to rote learn their way around such interfaces, the classic problem of graphical interfaces ... she's used to all the options being available at first glance. For instance if I wanted to make a call right now on my Android, I would press the green button with a phone icon on it. The logs view would pop-up because that's the last view I've used. To dial a number manually, I would have to select the "Keypad" tab. To search of a contact I have to press the "Contacts" tab, which on Android at least is a different app with a different top bar of tabs. Clicking on a name would show me that person's profile. I would have to do another click on his phone number to actually initiate the call. This is in contrast with her Nokia phone - to dial a number out of memory, you just need to start dialing the number on the always available physical key pad, then you press the green button, which is also always available on display. To search for a contact, you press the down arrow and then upon selecting the desired entry you press the green button. To look in the logs, maybe to dial the last number dialed, you press the up arrow, dialing involving a press on the green button again. So basically I think it's because every basic use-case involves a number of 2 or 3 steps that can be easily remembered because all the buttons are on display and there's also some consistency (dialing involves either typing or selecting a phone number + a press on the green button). Of course, she probably could have learned to use an iPhone if she really wanted to. But she doesn't have the patience anymore.

by gnaffle 14y ago

bad_user 14y ago

I don't really know why my mom struggled with it, but I guess it's because of the tree-like interface, and because normal users are used to rote learn their way around such interfaces, the classic problem of graphical interfaces ... she's used to all the options being available at first glance. For instance if I wanted to make a call right now on my Android, I would press the green button with a phone icon on it. The logs view would pop-up because that's the last view I've used. To dial a number manually, I would have to select the "Keypad" tab. To search of a contact I have to press the "Contacts" tab, which on Android at least is a different app with a different top bar of tabs. Clicking on a name would show me that person's profile. I would have to do another click on his phone number to actually initiate the call. This is in contrast with her Nokia phone - to dial a number out of memory, you just need to start dialing the number on the always available physical key pad, then you press the green button, which is also always available on display. To search for a contact, you press the down arrow and then upon selecting the desired entry you press the green button. To look in the logs, maybe to dial the last number dialed, you press the up arrow, dialing involving a press on the green button again. So basically I think it's because every basic use-case involves a number of 2 or 3 steps that can be easily remembered because all the buttons are on display and there's also some consistency (dialing involves either typing or selecting a phone number + a press on the green button). Of course, she probably could have learned to use an iPhone if she really wanted to. But she doesn't have the patience anymore.