The BBC has a good piece on mobile interfaces, why they’re not very good and why it’s pretty hard to do something about that. The main problem is that the best interface for scrolling through long lists (currently viewed as the iPod scroll-wheel) is not very use for dialling numbers or writing text, other things mobile phones have to do. I think the best answer at the moment is to have both types in a slide-form or clamshell phone, but then there is problems with width. I also found the following interesting:
“One solution is called Ninespace, an interface in which every level of the menu is presented as an animated 3×3 grid, with each option corresponding to a number on the keypad.”
Maybe with icons representing the menu option and a line at the bottom explaining what it is when it’s highlighted by pressing a number on the keypad.
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