Mike Brittain

I’ve been mildly anticipating the release of the Verizon Voyager phone ever since I got my iPhone. Mind you, not because I like Verizon. Rather, I have been curious to find out what an “iPhone Killer” looks like.

I have been digging around this morning for information about the new Verizon phone. My interest is in the overall software experience and usability, as well as any info I can find about the web browsing experience. I don’t believe that the iPhone’s success is hinged on the fact that it has a touch screen. Sure, that provides a certain wow-factor, which in turn is provided some of the phone’s initial success. But adding a touch screen to a phone doesn’t make it successful.

Watch this video from SlashGear.com. If you’re familiar with recent iPhone ads, you will remember that much (though not all) of the of the switching between landscape and portrait formats are user-initiated. This puts the user in control. This is something I do regularly based on my comfort. What I noticed in SlashGear’s walk-through is that the Voyager seems to force the user to switch between portrait and landscape format.

Some other things I found interesting:

• For text entry, the user kept opening the keyboard. If the keyboard is so much easier to use, then why bother making a in the first place?
• After text entry, the user switched back to the touch screen. Well, actually, near the end of the video he just gave up completely and stuck to the keyboard (!).
• Making a phone call caused his previous location search to disappear.
• The touch screen doesn’t seem that stellar. Looks like it takes multiple “taps” at times to get the screen to react. My personal favorite is when the poor guy tries to flick the screen to scroll the results.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghypR6g5ZAE&rel=1]

The thing that Apple seems to have done so well with the iPhone is not literally the touch screen of the hardware, but the integration of great, usable software.

I haven’t had a chance to use the mobile web browser from Verizon, but from what I’ve read, I think it still dumbs down web pages to make them fit on your mobile phone. I didn’t believe that the iPhone’s version of the Safari web browser would be very good — who wants to look at a huge web page zoomed out so that all of the text will fit into a microscopic space? But it really is a fantastic piece of software. It’s easy to zoom in and out of the sections you want, AND… what you get on your desktop is what you get on your mobile phone (minor exception being Flash content).

What really sets me off about a company like Verizon is that the recent commercials for the Voyager emphasize the “touch” experience. Somehow, just by adding a touch screen, Verizon has secured success in selling this phone. Oh, but “that’s just the half of it” (reveal: keyboard). What happened to the old “less is more” adage?