Pantech USA offers a neat looking but not well-designed-to-use Android-based smartphone called BURST that AT&T’s offering for 99 cents and has a set of annoying problems. This blogger’s Mother was the recipient of one of those phones, and she’s had a hard time with it.
It’s increasingly obvious that many smartphone developers just either don’t want to, or don’t know how to create a smartphone so easy to use the elderly can take to them like a duck takes to water. The Pantech USA BURST smartphone you see in this Tout below has a weird display that’s a hub-and-spoke system some genius came up with and probably thought it was intuitive to use – it’s not.
It’s funny how the insecurities of a designer or engineer can find their way into a product. It’s a fair bet the Pantech USA smartphone designers believed they were setting up some kind of half-assed intelligence test – well, if that’s the case, the joke’s on them. It’s not funny. A device is supposed to be easy to use – not hard to use. The best and most obvious display for any smart phone consists of dial number keys and a button to press named “call.” One should not have to fish around for this display; it should be front and center.
Stay tuned.