“Today’s smartphones are too much of a handful, according to Israeli company Else: You either need to grab them with both hands and punch away at the keyboard with your thumbs, or you hold them with one hand and touch the screen with the other. However, Else’s Intuition software platform makes it possible to access all the functions, contacts and data in a phone with just one hand.” The company’s entire website is done in Flash. I’m not kidding.
Yeah, the website is bad taste.
However, the UI they provide looks familiar. I swear I’ve seen those pictures before (must have been at least a year ago though. (at Engadget maybe?))
I’ve been waiting for someone to invent a touchscreen user interface that was really easy to use with one hand (hint: Android isn’t). Probably this UI will be more vaporware than something else, though.
Well, Mozilla’s tab/management contest had a very similar entry:
http://design-challenge.mozillalabs.com/summer09/#bic-innovation
http://video.golem.de/handy/2839/ausprobiert-first-else-auf-dem-mob…
After looking at it I don’t think they have really done what they are suggesting. Or even what they are suggesting needs to be done.
From the looks of it you will have to scroll through far more menus, even if using just one thumb, to get to where you want to go for the apps they show.
I also dont like when UI’s put things off the screen in a manner that you need to slide to see. Maybe just me, but I find it annoying.
I have played around a fair deal with Android, WebOS, and iPhone OS and with all of them the only time that I use two hands is for typing. And even then, I use two hands because that is how I like to type, there is no need to do so if you dont want to.
I dont see this as a contender to any of the current mobile systems since they all look better and are as easy (or easier) to use.
The phone it’s self reminds me a bit of the Emblaze Monolith or Edelweiss. Anybody remember those two jewels of Israeli smart-phone vapor ware?
http://www.emblazemobile.com/project.html
http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/10/emblaze-monolith.jpg
I’ve seen this criticism several times, but I’ve owned an iPhone since the day it was released and the vast majority of the time, I operate it with a single hand. The only time I use two hands is in landscape mode, and even then, only when I’m playing a game or typing large amounts of text.
And yes, that website is awful.
I’m guessing that the pitch for the intro video/ad was “give us something like the Apple 1984 ad, if it it had been written by Phillip K. Dick and directed by the Wachowski brothers.”
Fairly slick production values though, I’ll give them that much.