 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion Groups General General TopicsGSMBluetoothProviders AlltelATT WirelessCingularFidoNextelSprint PCST-MobileVerizonManufacturers EricssonNokiaMotorolaCountry Specific Australian GroupUK GroupRelated Topics PocketPCPalmMore Topics ... |
Cellular Phone Forum / Providers / Verizon / January 2006Verizon is Standardizing a single user interface on all of their phones and it is terrible!!
I was thinking about switching to Verizon, but they apparently are imposing their own phone user interface on all of the cell phones that they sell. It is really ugly with no 3d icons and the icons it has are just horrible and it is mostly red. I think the cell phone makers were doing a great job of creating their own menus. Now you will just be buying their phones for their outer appearance and for a couple of features such as data and the camera resolution and not for how good the menu is. The Motorola Razor has the new interface and it has slowed down the initial response time to about 2 seconds from the time you press the menu button until the menu pops up.. With the technology we have today, any lag in button response should be gone. The Verizon salesperson said that they standardized the user interface so it was easier to go from one phone to another. Ya easier for Verizon personel but it isn't very difficult for the users to use the different menu interfaces from different cell phone manufactures especially since you have 1 to 2 years due to your contract to figure it out. Verizon has just shot itself in the foot by making this decision to standardize their menu and with such a horrible interface especially a red one. Are there any websites that show this new interface up close? Stephen R. >I was thinking about switching to Verizon, but they apparently are imposing >their own phone user interface on all of the cell phones that they sell. [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > standardize their menu and with such a horrible interface especially a red > one. I found a website with a quick google search: http://mobilekorea.tv/images/stories/News/lge_VX9800_5.jpg Not the greatest picture but at least you can get the idea. > Are there any websites that show this new interface up close? > [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] >> standardize their menu and with such a horrible interface especially a >> red one. Thanks for the link. Is it possible that only the "Verizon" branded phones will get this standard interface? At least if that is the case, there will still be a choice even if you choose verizon. Stephen R. >I found a website with a quick google search: > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > >> Are there any websites that show this new interface up close? > Thanks for the link. > > Is it possible that only the "Verizon" branded phones will get this standard > interface? That IS the case. But therein lies the rub: ALL phones that Verizon Wireless sells carry the Verizon brand. The only "phones" that will be exempt (at least for now) are PDA smartphones and Blackberries, because they must use their own software interfaces. But most average cell phone users aren't interested in PDAs, nor are they willing or able to shell out the cash for one.  SignatureE-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. > Verizon has just shot itself in the foot by making this decision to > standardize their menu and with such a horrible interface especially a red > one. Another reason for them to go to the "standardized" UI is that it is implemented as a BREW application which can be readily updated over the air. And it makes it real easy to disable any built-in functionality that they find "inconvenient"; e.g., MP3 player (vs. VCast Music), Bluetooth file transfer functionality (vs. PIX Place, ringtones from GetItNow, and VCast Music). Oh Please, the interface is fine! As many different phones that I go through, it's nice to have some familiarity amongst them. Lets constructively bitch about something like how we get screwed by Verizon from 5:59 am to 6:59 am on the nights and weekends! Verizon better wake up and see how Cingular is taking over with promo's and rollover minutes......It's already happening, look at Radio Shack, Verizon there was just dropped.......Hmmmm! The public is blinded by promos. Regardless of how good the network is as Verizon rightly states, the average Joe just wants a 2 cent crap Nokia antennaless phone and a $19.99 plan. That's the bottom line! john wrote on [22 Jan 2006 16:15:30 -0800]: > Oh Please, the interface is fine! > As many different phones that I go through, it's nice to have some [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > rollover minutes......It's already happening, look at Radio Shack, > Verizon there was just dropped.......Hmmmm! Because Verizon didn't want to play the churn game. > The public is blinded by promos. Regardless of how good the network is > as Verizon rightly states, the average Joe just wants a 2 cent crap > Nokia antennaless phone and a $19.99 plan. > That's the bottom line! Then when that 2cent phone doesn't work because the network sucks they learn. I do not think that the Sprint PCS and cingular networks, the two services sold at RadioShack here, suck. In fact both of those services have more square miles and more people covered here in WI. I wish I could agree with you, but the network does not suck. I travel a lot and so does my son, he is in the service and drives to Ft. Lauderdale from S. Dakota with not too many problems. Sprint is pushed heavily at the BXes and his friends who have it are always having problems when they travel. If Verizon sucks, which carrier do you prefer? Please don't say Cingular or worse yet T-Mobile I'll be very dissappointed. Any cellphone without an external antenna is not as efficient as one with, so of course IT will suck but it's not the network it's the phone. I sure would have liked to try the LG V phone, but no antenna, no analog = no sale! >> Any cellphone without an external antenna is not as > efficient as one with, so of course IT will suck but it's > not the network it's the phone. I sure would have liked > to try the LG V phone, but no antenna, no analog = no > sale! I'm not sure what you're saying here. By "external antenna" do you mean extendable ones? or a jack on the phone for an external antenna? By "any cellphone" do you mean any cell phone on VZW service or any cell phone on any carrier? If you are talking about extendable antennas and about all phones and not just phones on VZW service then that's not necessarily true. Given the common form factor of current phones it depends on the band they are using. VZW is mostly 800 so a 1/4 wave antenna will be longer than most of the phone housings and should be extendable to 1/4 wave (my Kyocera 7135 actually has an extendable antenna that extends to 1/2 wave). If the phone operates on the 1900 band then 1/4 wave fits well in a common sized phone housing and wouldn't need to be extendable. There probably is some effect from your hand and the other phone parts in proximity but not as much as having it the right length. -Quick Sorry, I never subscribe to mediocrity. If I am going to pay more than $200 for a phone I don't want a lemming interface so "the interface is fine" doesn't cut it. The interface needs to be "fantastic". The people that can only afford the cheapest plan and phone either have a tight budget, only use their phone in case of an emergency, or have little opinions about the things they purchase. Both the Verizon and Sprint Networks share the same vendor infrastructure (i.e. base stations, base station controllers, etc.). The better network is the one that has more coverage for the areas you would be in. Verizon Network - Motorola, Lucent, Nortel Sprint Network - Motorola, Lucent, Nortel BTW: Cingular has an advantage with GSM because the audio is not synthesized (it is digitized) like CDMA is with Sprint and Verizon. Listen to music on the other end of a Sprint/Verizon phone and you will see that it cuts out often and doesn't sound quite right. That is because it only synthesizes the human voice and actually only certain languages. Also there is more phone delay in the Verizon and Sprint networks due to the heavy processing needed for CDMA. That is why it is common to talk over one another on a Sprint/Verizon network. > Oh Please, the interface is fine! > As many different phones that I go through, it's nice to have some [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Nokia antennaless phone and a $19.99 plan. > That's the bottom line! > BTW: Cingular has an advantage with GSM because the audio > is not synthesized (it is digitized) like CDMA is with [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > only synthesizes the human voice and actually only > certain languages. What?! What have you been smoking? "Synthesizes the human voice"? "and actually only certain languages"?!?! What happens if I start talking in one of those other languages? > Also there is more phone delay in the > Verizon and Sprint networks due to the heavy processing > needed for CDMA. That is why it is common to talk over > one another on a Sprint/Verizon network. Oh yea... they have to recognize what you are actually saying and then synthesize it.... yea, that's the ticket! -Quick With the new Verizon UI in effect, would I still be able to customize, say, a motorola E815, as far as "loud detail"/ring setting goes? If a phone is simply used as a phone, will any of those functions be different from "now"? Thanks. >> BTW: Cingular has an advantage with GSM because the audio >> is not synthesized (it is digitized) like CDMA is with [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > > -Quick > What?! What have you been smoking? "Synthesizes the > human voice"? "and actually only certain languages"?!?! > What happens if I start talking in one of those other > languages? > Oh yea... they have to recognize what you are actually > saying and then synthesize it.... yea, that's the ticket! Kinda ridiculous isn't it?? And it manages to synthesize all manner of voices while it's at it! I wonder WHERE that guy got his information from?? I know, he SYNTHESIZED IT! :-) >> What?! What have you been smoking? "Synthesizes the >> human voice"? "and actually only certain languages"?!?! [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > I know, he SYNTHESIZED IT! :-) ummm, I thought about that and ruled it out since I've rarely seen trolls that good. If it was a very excellent troll he would have avoided any hard technology like stating "CDMA vs. GSM". I always figure there has to be some outside factor that triggers these sort of posts. Then it came to me that he was probably projecting from the motorola e815 phone technology/function to radio network technology and wireless carrier. I have seen a snippet or two that leave me with the vague impression that the e815 will do text to speach from the address book entries. That was the only way I could explain the "synthesized voice" concept... Still fascinating how some people can have all these vague references to things floating around in their brain and then somehow hook them together to produce a post like that. -Quick On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:33:12 GMT, "Quick" <quick7135-news@NOSPAMyahoo.com> chose to add this to the great equation of life, the universe, and everything: > I have seen a snippet or >two that leave me with the vague impression that the e815 >will do text to speach from the address book entries. The E815 uses a combination of canned and synthesized voices. You press the voice command button and a canned voice says "say a command." You say "call Joe Blow" and if it absolutely understood you it just says "<synth>Joe Blow <canned>connecting." If it's not sure, it says "<canned>did you say 'call <synth>Joe Blow?'" and you say yes or no. If you have more than one entry for Joe, the canned voice says "which number?" and you tell it; you can avoid this by specifying which number when you say the name. Tonight, my voice button got pressed accidentally and it just kept asking me to say a command instead of giving up like it's supposed to. I said "cancel" but it didn't understand me and I had to open it and press end to make it shut up. SignatureDavid Streeter, "a guy's guy" -- Dave Barry http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time. "Thanksgiving is that very special holiday when we take a break from our hectic everyday lives to spend quality time with our loved ones, rediscovering all the reasons why we don't actually live with them." - Dave Barry No I am not a troll! I have almost 10 years of experience in what I am posting. CELP, QCELP, RCELP, AND EVRC(Based off of RCELP) all use linear predictive encoding which uses a linear predictive filter. The linear predictive filter contains an excitation table of voice samples for culture, language, and sex that is used to lookup and encode each 20ms sample of speech. Nyquist is cheated by doing this. Only the synthesized setup parameters from this filter are sent and not any digitization of the voice. And yes the very first working version of a CELP vocoder was for a Male, English speaking person. When a Japanese speaking person first tried it, the speech was almost not recognizable. The encoding itself requires more than 20 MIPS by the phone. Now virtually all languages are covered. I have tried to find some links on google, but none have the detail needed to describe it all, but for what is available you can see that the standards for these vocoders always describe speech and not "SOUND". >>> What?! What have you been smoking? "Synthesizes the >>> human voice"? "and actually only certain languages"?!?! [quoted text clipped - 28 lines] > > -Quick > "Quick" <quick7135-news@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message >> What?! What have you been smoking? "Synthesizes the [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > Kinda ridiculous isn't it?? And it manages to synthesize all manner of > voices while it's at it! Well, this piece of BS was still far and away better than Larry's explanation: CDMA is really an analog modem hidden IN your phone that sends out data in an analog FM channel. :) SignatureE-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. >> BTW: Cingular has an advantage with GSM because the audio >> is not synthesized (it is digitized) like CDMA is with [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > What happens if I start talking in one of those other > languages? The guy's typing out of his rear-end, I'd ignore him. ;) The real reason for CDMA's munging of music is that the vocoder currently is use (EVRC) was designed to compress, and compress again, all in the name of beating GSM in capacity. All it cares about is a human voice, which generally has a lot of unique and ever-changing audio characteristics to it (varying pitch, volume, random pauses, etc.). Anything repetitive or homogenous (like music or continuous tones) is perceived as background noise, something that's unnecessary to conversation, so it's simply filtered out to save bandwidth. Whether or not that's a bad or good thing is really up to the end user. Many people don't mind it; others do. And FWIW, the original QCELP 13k vocoder that was in use long ago on CDMA actually did a pretty good job of reproducing music. And anyone who is fortunate enough to still have a working a Qualcomm QCP-2700 or 2750 activated on Verizon or Sprint are probably getting the best call quality you can get on either CDMA *or* GSM. However, QCELP wasted bandwidth like crazy, and carriers wanted to cram more calls into each channel, so it was ditched in favor of what we have now. And when GSM carriers upgrade to UMTS, the vocoders they use will probably be just as compression-obsessed. >> Also there is more phone delay in the >> Verizon and Sprint networks due to the heavy processing [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > Oh yea... they have to recognize what you are actually > saying and then synthesize it.... yea, that's the ticket! Heh, this guy's never echo-tested a GSM call. The delay between CDMA and GSM is actually about the same. SignatureE-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. > It's already happening, look at Radio Shack, > Verizon there was just dropped.......Hmmmm! Actually, the talk is (and even confirmed by RadioShack employees) is that it was Verizon that dropped RadioShack, because RS was asking for too much in terms of commissions and fees. Besides, if you're shopping for your next cell phone at RadioShack for any reason other than sheer desperation, then you may want to rethink how you're going about shopping for a wireless product. > The public is blinded by promos. Regardless of how good the network is > as Verizon rightly states, the average Joe just wants a 2 cent crap > Nokia antennaless phone and a $19.99 plan. And that's the unfortunate thing, considering they're going to spend the next two years complaining about how crappily that 2 cent phone works, then switching carriers and getting ANOTHER cheap 2-cent phone, where the cycle will begin again. SignatureE-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. It happened to my sister in law, she moved down here from Atlanta and renewed her Bellsouth plan to Cingular (after asking me which carrier was good for the area) and got the crap Nokia antennaless phone with cheap plan, lured in by rollover minutes. Yeah, why would anyone go to a middleman to buy a cellphone with plan? Yeah, why would anyone go to a middleman to buy a cellphone with plan? >Verizon has just shot itself in the foot by making this decision to >standardize their menu and with such a horrible interface especially a red >one. If you don't use PIX messaging or VCAST, you can flash it to the Alltel flash - full standard Moto GUI, fully customizable skins, etc. Mine's beautiful. :) Robert wrote on [Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:30:16 -0600]: >>Verizon has just shot itself in the foot by making this decision to >>standardize their menu and with such a horrible interface especially a red >>one. > > If you don't use PIX messaging or VCAST, you can flash it to the > Alltel flash - full standard Moto GUI, fully customizable skins, etc. Who does use VCAST? I can't see a real use for it. >Robert wrote on [Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:30:16 -0600]: >>> [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > >Who does use VCAST? I can't see a real use for it. Usually people who use the word "cool" five or six times when talking about their cell phone. >>> If you don't use PIX messaging or VCAST, you can flash it to the >>> Alltel flash - full standard Moto GUI, fully customizable skins, etc. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >Usually people who use the word "cool" five or six times when talking >about their cell phone. Now that's uncool! :P >>Usually people who use the word "cool" five or six times when talking >>about their cell phone. > > Now that's uncool! :P As opposed to people using another brand of phone who walk around saying "That's hot" > As opposed to people using another brand of phone who walk around saying > "That's hot" No, That's AWESOME!....(c; >> If you don't use PIX messaging or VCAST, you can flash it to the >> Alltel flash - full standard Moto GUI, fully customizable skins, etc. > >Who does use VCAST? I can't see a real use for it. Personally, I don't either - I think it's gimmicky. There are some issues with the AAA authentication on Verizon's network but I have a feeling that they will be worked out soon - then PIX messaging (to your own server, not at 25 cents a pop) will be available, along with GIN (if you want it) and possibly VCast too. The Razr was headed back for a return before I got the Alltel flash - now it's damn near perfect for me. > The Razr was headed back for a return before I got the Alltel flash - > now it's damn near perfect for me. Did someone say "Alltel"?.......(c; > Did someone say "Alltel"?.......(c; Whats Alltel?? Guess it's not where I live huh? "john" <radionet@bellsouth.net> wrote in news:1138327625.899451.153720 @g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com: > Whats Alltel?? Guess it's not where I live huh? Where are you on Bell$outh that doesn't have Alltel?? http://www.alltel.com/personal/wireless/plans/national_freedom.html > Where are you on Bell$outh that doesn't have Alltel?? Possibly a small town like Atlanta! Yes, their extended coverage includes the area, but they don't have native coverage and therefore don't market or sell service to local residents. In message <Xns9756EA006853Enoonehomecom@208.49.80.253>, Larry > > The Razr was headed back for a return before I got the Alltel flash - > > now it's damn near perfect for me. > > Did someone say "Alltel"?.......(c; The best. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.