Two of my favorite brands,
Samsung and
Bang & Olufsen, released their combined efforts as the
SGH-E910 this month in the US. One would think it's like the old
Reese's peanut butter cup commercial where two people are headed on a collision course, one carrying chocolate and the other carrying peanut butter. When they collide, they taste the fruits of their hybridized peanut butter/chocolate experience and claim gastronomic success. Samsung's got the phone technology; B&O's got the alien design touch. I'll have to check it out myself to pass judgement. Reports and commentary on the Net seem unkind. Personally I find nothing wrong with law9();?> -- the fact that it was even released should deem it a successful experiment in
simplicity.
From a design perspective, the new
phone borrows styling cues from the
rotary telephone. With the success of
youtube I would have thought I could easily find a particular historical video I saw a few years back. It was a short film from when the rotary dial was introduced in the U.S. to teach Americans how to use the then newly introduced interface. There was an extra-large dial prop with a smiling woman placing her hand into a circle and spinning the numbers one by one in an exaggerated fashion. The movie emphasized for me how some form of explicit law4();?>-ing usually underlies what we perceive as a
simple interface. My nostalgia for the rotary design draws me to the new Samsung/B&O phone, but for a younger person that's never used a rotary phone the attraction is surely less deep.
John Maeda
