The search for a slogan for Motorola mobile phones

Here I am with a shiny new Motorola phone which I find really really shiny and nice, but as you may have guessed from the previous blog entry, I’m not happy with the software. I must hearken back to the past when we had a separate Sony and Ericsson phone company. Sony manufactured really pretty phones, with good user interfaces, but the hardware behind the phone itself sucked. Ericsson created technically good phones, but their software and look sucked. When they came together it has been good for the both of them. The phones look good, they have good software and they make good calls (for the most part, don’t buy the low end phone models). With Motorola they’ve always had technically good stuff, it’s worked well, but their software has always made me want to hurl. My first phone was an old Timeport. It had an IR port, Bluetooth didn’t exist at that time. I thought that the phone software was good. Oh foolish, foolish me. I went back to have a look at it again recently. What a piece of shite. The menu system is incomprehensible and performing the simplest of tasks on the phone is a nightmare. Fast forward to today. The menu system has improved significantly, but they’ve still got things wrong in the most critical of ways, the extra click here, the missing option there. The fact that practically all the configuration in the phone is accessible through the initial setup screen. I mean really folks, the purpose of an initial setup screen is to get enough information to use the phone – like a wizard. Ask the person if they want to set the date/time or use auto-update (missing on the Vodafone branded ones; I think it’s because they can’t actually get the network clock correct – lazy buggers!), then off they go with their new phone.

How do I configure Bluetooth? Menu -> Connectivity -> Bluetooth Link (only option, I know there’s a possibility of truesync and IR, but if there’s only one then take the fucker and don’t ask me) -> Setup

How do I compose a text message? Menu -> Messages -> New Message -> New Short Message. Considering that 85% of all phone messages are text messages a shortcut to go straight to a compose window would be nice.

I won’t even pretend to understand how the Speed No ‘feature’ works, it really is that bad; mind you the Sony one wasn’t much good either for the non-smartphone models.

I regularly have to switch my phone to silent and back to my regular profile. How do I do this on these phones? I have to navigate through to the specific profile for silent, or else change the volume for the current profile using the volume control keys.

The phone book. Again, multiple entries for each name, the only thing identifying them is the tiny logo in the corner. The ‘preferred number’ feature is laughingly ineffectual, as far as I can tell it just puts one number ahead of the others.

Let’s see, now for the slogan: Motorola, solid phones, shitty interfaces.