Graham Chastney

I’ve been given a Vodafone 1605 to evaluate for the next month. This phone is the HTC TyTN rebadged.

So here’s my experience from the start, and some observations along the way.

My current normal phone is an i-mate SP5, so that’s what I’m comparing with as I go along. Both of these phones are Windows Mobile 5 phones.   

The packaging is the usual cardboard container filled with all manner of plastic wrapped cables and plugs. This packaging seems to have become the standard way that things get delivered. One of these days I will understand why we have replaced plastic containers with cardboard containers only to wrap everything in plastic bags instead. Is this really better for the environment..

The two devices are different to each other in the primary role that they are trying to accommodate. The blend between phone role and communications role is different. The i-Mate is primarily a phone, the 1605 (TyTN) is primarily a communication device. To make the 1605 (TyTN) better for communications HTC have provided a bigger screen which is also touch sensitive and given us a push-away keyboard. The i-Mate is quite limited in the number of “feature buttons” the 1605 (TyTN) has loads of them. Even things that you don’t expect to be buttons are buttons.

The 1605 (TyTN) is bigger than the SP5 in every dimension. It’s longer, it’s wider and it’s deeper, but only a few millimetres in each direction. It’s surprising though, how much difference a few millimetres make, this phone feels much bigger and much heavier. I normally carry the Sp5 in my trouser pocket, but I think the TyTN will have to be in its pouch on my waistband.

One of the things that is noticeably bigger is the battery. Considering all of the similarities between these devices, the main drain on the power has to be the larger screen. I’ll only know after a few days whether power is a problem or not.

One of the things that you notice as you unwrap all of the items in cardboard container is that they all use the USB interface; the charger is USB and the headphones are USB. The device itself only has a single USB interface. This leads to a practical problem – you can’t use the headphones while you are charging the device and the first thing you have to do is charge the device.

Having a touch screen the 1605 (TyTN) also comes with a stylus. The stylus is tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of the device. As a left-handed person who holds his phone in his right-hand this is probably the worst place for the stylus to be stored. This is the corner of the phone that is embedded into the palm of my right-hand. A few times already I have pressed “feature buttons” on the side of the phone while turning it around in my fingers trying to get to the stylus. While we are on the stylus, you have to give it a good tug to get it out. I don’t think there is much chance of it falling out.

My left-handedness means that the thumb wheel on the 1605 (TyTN), which the SP5 doesn’t have, is also on the wrong side, but I suppose I’ll get used to that.

The switching of orientation between landscape keyboard working and normal closed use is really slick. It even switches the orientation of the joystick which I wasn’t expecting, but is logical.

Having a keyboard for messages is fabulous and I’m already much faster (not surprisingly) that I ever was with predictive text on a numeric pad.

I’m not sure what the standard screen colour scheme is for the HTC TyTN when it ships, the Vodafone branded one I have is using grey and it’s really, well, grey.

The SP5 uses mini-SD, the TyTN uses micro-SD memory, so they’ve saved themselves some space there. The other advantage with the TyTN is that the memory is accessible on the outside so you can swap it without turning the phone off. On the SP5 you have to turn the phone off so you can take the back off it before you can change the memory. Unfortunately I don’t have a really large micro-SD card to I won’t be able to test out some of the media capabilities.

The verdict at the end of day – I’m not sure I’ve seen enough benefit yet to make me happy with the extra size and weight that comes with the TyTN. It’s early days (day actually) so I’m sure I’ll come across other things that will add to or detract from my impressions of the TyTN .

If you want a more detailed review there are a few:

• Trusted Reviews
• Tracy and Matt’s Blog
• The Mobile Gadgeteer

Sleep has been a big issue over the last few days – and it’s reinforced to me the impact of sleep on the brain. The result was that by yesterday I was suffering from sleep deprivation. It’s a bit better today but not much.

This whole thing started on Friday when we had some people visiting for the weekend – little people. The little people slept OK, but had various coughs which disturbed the sleep pattern of the rest of the household. On Sunday the little people went home and I prepared for an early start on Monday.

There is something about an early start that means that I never get a good night of sleep before it.

Not only was Monday an early start it was a long day. The result was that I didn’t properly relax before going to bed – another night of sleep sub-standard sleep.

Last night Sue started with the cold that she was gifted to her by the little people.

I would love to have been able to measure my productivity yesterday afternoon. I am glad that I don’t operate heavy or dangerous machinery because I was in no fit state. I felt like someone had entered my head and moved everything around so that I could no longer find them. Writing was incredibly difficult, each word that would normally be within easy reach was off in some deep archive.

Yesterday’s experience demonstrated the acute impact of short-term sleep deprivation, but long term mild deprivation can have an even more devastating impact. From Making a Good Brain Great:

“Getting less than six hours of sleep at night decreases our ability to fight stress. Research has shown that people who consistently get less sleep than others have overall decreased brain function. Inadequate sleep may promote insulin resistance: compared with those who sleep seven and a half to eight hours at night. Those who get fewer than six and a half hours secrete 50 percent more insulin and are 40 percent less sensitive to insulin. Lowered sleep has been associated with diabetes and obesity. In our fast-paced society, we are often sleep deprived. In 1910 adults got an average of nine hours of sleep each night; in 1975 it had decreased to seven and a half; and in 2000 it has decreased further, to seven hours.”

Looking forward to a good night of sleep tonight.

(Steve: one of these days I will remember to return your book)

There have been a few articles over the last couple of days dealing with the issue of information overload and interruptions – this apparently now has a name: informania.

The dictionary definition doesn’t quite seem to line up with the definition given in this article. There definition is this:

“infomania” — the loss of concentration caused by the constant electronic interruptions that plague many office workers.

The other interesting article is this one created by Dan Russell over on Creating Passionate Users.

I resonate strongly with both of these articles. If I turn on everything that could be screaming for my attention it makes for quite a list:

• Mobile phone – calls
• Mobile phone – messages
• Office/House phone
• Instant Messaging – personal (Live Messenger)
• Instant Messaging – corporate (Sametime)
• Calendar (Notes)
• Tasks (Notes)
• Email – personal (Outlook)
• Email – corporate (Notes)
• VOIP (Skype)
• Blogs (Feedburner)

And that’s without including all of the external distractions, or any interruptions from biological interrupters (people).

It’s a wonder I ever get to do anything other than deal with the interrupts. But I’ve learnt a lesson, a switch some of them off. It’s amazing how liberating it is.

Dan’s recognition of the “setup time” between interruptions is spot-on. There are some days when I feel worn-out by all of the context switches.

I think we have a long way to go before we really understand how to attract peoples eye-attention to the correct thing at the correct time. We need to think a lot harder about the impact of the technology that we are making available and the way that it influences the user experience.

This one made me chuckle today:

According to my copy of Sametime 7.5 “America” is not a real word? “American” is, but not “America” .

Any article which has a line like this in it has to be saying something:

“Yet all those technophiles out there, lusting after the latest nano-proportioned, polyphonic multi-megapixel wireless gizmo, would beg to differ.

The article in question is Future Imperfect from the BBC. The basic premise of the piece is that new technology isn’t as important as it thinks it is.

I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view.

Let’s face it, a technology can only regard itself as truly important if it has been around for a few hundred years .