Life with a new phone UX.

categories:

Life with a new phone: Separating work from everything else.

New employers readily provided a phone when I realized that legal records hold could probably not be predictably limited.  That is, no matter how good the InTune sandboxing is, some demand could possibly creep out to include other stuff.  So now I carry 2 phones.  Naturally, I chose a mostly unfamiliar User eXperience to insure I knew I was on the work phone.  And oh boy, is the UX different.

Volume Controls: Three layers deep and counting.

I’m assuming the fruit company patented their context-sensitive volume knobs.  Either that or wow, never underestimate the poser of contrarian-ness because damn.  The volume control is buried 3 levels down, I have yet to get the buttons on the side to do anything effective.  Ok, no, not true, today after pairing BlueTooth headphones and actually streaming music for the 1st time, I did get the volume buttons to do something, I’m just not sure what.

If you want to quiet the phone before a meeting?  There (must be) an application for that.  Want to turn up one of the 7 possible sliders on the Volume control panel? There (might be) an application for that.  Want to simply shut the phone+vibrator up completely? Turn it off.  Or (perhaps) there’s an application for that.

Notifications: in Google ville, 1 is the new Zero.

How about badges on icons?  Got em.  In fact, can’t get rid of them.  Sure, you can login, then swipe up to leave the first page, then swipe right to get the next page after the one after the first page, then click Settings, then click Notifications, then click to get to the per-application on-off switch and kill them forever for that application for all purposes.  Or just live with the fact that Outlook, Teams, and my identity-application will now forever be emblazoned with a little red circle sporting a number>1.

And let’s ponder that application store, shall we?  ”You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”  Every application has ads, sells my info to anyone, and …wait a sec, here’s a volume control that claims no ads and open source…but it hasn’t been updated in 2 years.  Well, ok, putting my apples in this basket.  But wait, look, my employers have provided some kind of special application store in their private space of the phone.  Nope, just Microsoft office.  Not even the myriad of applications required to administer my benefits.

As mentioned here: https://components.one/posts/the-new-pornographers-tech-reviews there’s been decades of positive-only reviews in tech that have lead to our current situation.  The totally privatized walled garden from the fruit computers, and the pseudo-libertarian nightmare from the little green robot.  While my PinePhone works after a fashion, it’s a long way from ready for anything.  Sailfish runs on 10 year old products never sold on this side of the pond.  Oh let’s just stop there, too many other sad stories from this side of the compiled-language/packet-switched divide.

Oh yeah, chopping up AT&T was SUCH a smart move.

Addendum:

“What matters is that the potentiation of will is the only meaningful criterion against which tools can be evaluated.” (p. 24)  I’m pretty confident my thoughts stand in good stead in light of data.