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Showing posts with label Nokia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nokia. Show all posts

Monday, February 25, 2013

Nokia N8: Is it really accessible? Find yourself

This report might concern to some people same as it initially did to my dear friend and very good tester Santhosh Tuppad -Why am I testing and writing a report for a phone which is ousted from the market? The simple reason is that I currently own only this phone and I don’t have any other option until it stops working or I loose it somewhere or somebody gifts me a latest phone.Smile 

I have Nokia N8 with me since last two years but it was first time when I tested it from accessibility point of view - The reason is my current interest in the area of accessibility testing.

Nokia N8

(Image Credits: http://www.livechennai.com)

Before moving to my report, I would like to share brief history of Nokia N8: (Credits: Wikipedia)

The Nokia N8 is a touchscreen-based smartphone developed by Nokia. The Nokia N8 is the first device to run on the Symbian^3 mobile operating system and Nokia's flagship device of 2010. The N8 became the product with the most customer pre-orders in Nokia's history up to the point of its release and sales in Q4 2010 have been estimated to be almost 4 million. The N8 has a capacitive touchscreen and the first Nokia phone with multi-touch.

Believing the numbers it can be interpreted that it was one of popular phones from Nokia so this report might interest to many mobile testers and phone users.

For ease of understanding, I have divided my reports into three zones: Red, Yellow and Green. Red zone is danger zone which lists the accessibility issues of the phone. Contrary to Red zone, Green zone is the safest zone which lists the accessibility features. Yellow zone is placed somewhere mid of these two.

N8-AccessibilityReport

Red Zone

No Compatibility for Hearing Aid: One of the biggest drawbacks of Nokia N8 from accessibility  perspective that it doesn’t not provide compatibility with Hearing aids which could have helped user with Hear loss.

Voice Command: Nokia N8’s Voice Command feature seems most problematic area to me. There is no hard button for Voice Command which makes it difficult to use for visually challenged user. Placing a shortcut can’t be helpful as user can not open Voice Command by giving a voice command. Other drawbacks which I noticed are:

  • The shortcut buttons are small in size which can make it difficult to use for user with partially eye sight / motor disabilities.
  • It has limited functionality. You can use it for single word basic commands, don’t expect much from this.
  • The other most irritating feature is that it auto closes after 5 seconds. User needs to enter commands within 5 seconds otherwise ‘Poof’. For a user who stutters (for example, stuttering which causes involuntary silent pauses or blocks) can be quite difficult to use it.

No Stylus: Nokia N8 is delivered without any stylus. A stylus can be useful for the user’s with motor disabilities and not every stylus can be used with Nokia N8 because of Capacitive Touchscreen which requires an electrical conductor such as Human body to send the signal. Such devices need special capacitive stylus to work upon.

No Screen Magnifier: A screen magnifier is a very good and one of essential tools for users with low vision but Nokia N8 is missing it. Although they  have provide Zoomer which have limited functionality  and placed in Yellow Zone.

Yellow Zone

Font Formatting: This is an area which could have been made most useful for users with low eyesight but N8 miserably fails here. N8 has feature to change the font size, which ironically, applicable on text messages only. The other text such as application labels remain same.

Also, user can use only one default font style provided in the phone. I couldn’t find any feature which changes the font style used in the phone.

Zoomer: Nokia provides Zoomer to zoom in the pictures and the text content. That’s all. You are unable to see any icon, it’s not their problem. Their is no feature of screen magnification or resizing the icons.

Screen Reader: There is no default screen reader provided in Nokia N8. Users need to install a 3rd Party tool if they need one. Thankfully, Nokia N8 has a Message Reader which can read inbox messages for user.

Green Zone

The features listed in green zone might be common to any other smart phone but they definitely need a mention here.

Alert: N8 can alert user in many ways according to user’s preference. It has different alert options like Ringing, Vibrating, Flashing which finally adds some plus points to its credits.

Conversation: Messages are displayed in conversation form. It means a user can view complete conversion made with another user quickly without any hassle. This feature can be useful for users with bad or short term memory.

Help: This is the feature which I liked most about N8. It provides relevant help on every single screen. Help is just one tap away from the user.

Shortcut: Although, this feature doesn’t seem anything special for a smart phone but I believe it as one of the important accessible feature. It helps user to open an application quickly and avoids the longer path. Important feature for users with motor disabilities.

Consistency: The phone has consistent functionality on each screen.

Associating Caller’s Image and Tone: User can associate caller’s image and separate tone with the number which could help user to identify caller easily. The feature can be useful for short term memory and visually challenged users.

Compatible with Text Phones: N8 is compatible with the Text Phones. A text phone can help user to type and read conversation during a call, rather than using speech and hearing communication.

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Conclusion: Nokia has provided some basic accessible features in N8 which every other phone in market have. They should give more importance to accessibility and usability in their new upcoming phones if they really want to have an edge over other mobile giants such as Apple or Samsung.

Hope you find this post useful and informative. Please share your feedback in comment section.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

First Impression is the Last Impression


Today morning when I connected my phone to my computer I received a notification from Nokia Suite that software updates are available for my phone. Without any delay I started upgrading my phone’s operating system from Symbian Anna to Nokia Belle.
The Upgrade process was divided in four parts:
  1. Downloading Installation Files
  2. Backup of the Phone Data
  3. Installation
  4. Restore of the Phone Data

 Downloading Installation Files: The download process started without any delay. Total installation file size was 266MB. It is not contextual here but after looking at the installation file size first thing which came in my mind that Installation file size for Win 98 was lesser than this but that was past. Now memory is much cheaper comparatively. Anyway, everything went well and Nokia Belle installation files are downloaded successfully. Now, it was the time for backup.

 Backup of the Phone Data: The Installation process backs up all the data available in phone memory into mass memory. The Backup of phone data is started successfully but couldn’t finish it properly. Installer displayed the message that it would restart the phone and requested not to touch the phone during this process. I pressed the OK button. Phone restarting begun but never ended. Basically, I was waiting for notification message on my computer screen but installer program never responded back. After waiting for 15 minutes I checked my phone and it was ON. I unplugged my phone and plugged it once again.

 The same process started once again.

Downloading Installation Files:  As installation files were already downloaded so this step was skipped by the system.

Backup of the Phone Data:  The Backup process was started. Once the backup is completed for an entity, it is ticked by the installer to show that the entire data backup is done for that entity. In this way Installer program has taken back up of Calendars, Messages, Logs and Dictionary etc. successfully but in the end it has displayed the error that there is some problem with messages back up. The installer gave the same notification message which was given earlier that it would restart the phone and requested not to touch the phone during this process.

 As I have experienced the same thing earlier so I was sure that after restarting the whole process would start once again because of the error shown by the installer program, but I was wrong.

Installation: The phone restarted but instead of taking back up the installation process was started. Two things which were surprising for me during installation were:

  • Selection of Language
  • Enter the Security Code
As per the notification message I should not respond even if phone asks this information so I didn’t give the input.

The installation process was finished successfully.

Restore:  Once new OS is installed, the restoring of backup data is started. Once it is completed, I got the notification message on my computer screen.

The Job was done.

Issue during and after the Installation process:
  • I lost all my messages in my phone. The installer program never given me a chance to take the backup of the messages when it was unsuccessful. It has started the installation process immediately. 
  •  It’s not a big issue but still I was wondering why I got language selection dropdown. Isn’t it was obvious from my previous installation that I use English as my language. Moreover there was no other language in the list to select.
  • Now this was really ridiculous. I have used phone unlocking code for few days but I have removed it later and before installation there was no unlocking code was required. But after installation I had to enter the security code. What If I would have forget my unlocking code which I used last time few months back. 
  •  I have lost the creation dates of notes and that was really important for me. Now it displays the time when the files were restored.  I am wondering why these file properties are not considered while taking the back. 
  •  There are three installation folders of Nokia Belle is created in mass memory which are duplicates of each other. Why three folder?
I didn’t go through all the changes yet but I am sure that I will find more issues due to this upgrade when I will use other functionality of my phone.  

Now the question is why there are so many issues with the installer program. It clearly shows that installation testing was not done properly. There are many challenges with Mobile Application Testing  including the diversity of the devices but Nokia should have make sure that upgrade is happening properly on their devices. Moreover, they have released the Nokia Belle update for only six devices till now so it was possible to do the proper installation testing on such a small number of devices. But…

Generally people say – First Impression is the last Impression. Installation of the application is first activity so it should be smooth and flawless for better user experience.