A Device's UI

As more and more devices come to the market, the companies need to focus more on their device's software rather mainly on their hardware. As I have seen with many feature phones on carriers such as Verizon, the user interface (or UI) is not nearly as responsive or attractively appearing as the high end smart phones.

Now, you could argue that feature phones shouldn't be the same as smart phones. But think of it like this. Shouldn't the features that the phones offer be the only difference between smart phones and feature phones? Why does the UI have to suffer? From my past phones as well as the current feature phones that I have seen on the Verizon lineup, the UI seems to have been designed very quickly with barely any thought process put into it. Not only that, but touch screen phones in that category are not responsive at all and take multiple tries to get to where you want.

Another thing I have noticed is that the UI on all the non-smart phones on Verizon seem to have the same basic framework. They all have a main screen with 3 or 4 main buttons on the bottom of the screen: Dialer, Messages, Contacts, and Menu. If you were to click on the Menu button, you were taken to a screen with all of your phones features in a grid-like fashion.

People would be much happier to buy a feature phone if the UI were more responsive and more sleek-looking. A device's user interface is one the most important characteristics that producers should get right. It keeps the user happy if its responsive and it makes it look more mature with a nice appearance rather than the childish appearance that I have seen on feature phones today.