This is my phone - a Sony Ericsson K750i - I'm a big fan of it. All the pictures here were taken with it. And it has a splendid feature which I suspect they didn't design (though maybe they did) but which is genius and falls into a general class of very important features I'd call fidgetability.
You know when you're sitting in a cafe or a bar, for some reason, people tend to have their phones out in front of them, and they fidget with them. The great thing about this phone is it's perfectly balanced, and the lens cover creates a pivot so it spins round really well - with only a minimal shove. (Observe movie below.)
I think these ludic features will be increasingly important as actual functionality standardises. (Many thanks to Richard for teaching me what ludic means.)
spinning phone movie (About 5.5MB)
I've just noticed my camera does it too. So following phone filmed by camera, here's camera filmed by phone. Maybe Sony are onto something, ipods don't spin well. Anyone else got any technology they want to spin?
Russell, being tired of carrying around Ipod, digital camera and cell phone I was thinking of buying this phone as well.
I used to have a Sony Ericsson Z600 and I had many problems with the line: most of the time I was unreachable while with Nokia there was always rooming.
Did you ever experienced anything like that?
Posted by: Luca Vergano | November 24, 2005 at 02:37 PM
I have been rocking this phone for a couple months until it just died. It is frankly awesome - I used the camera shedloads and the mp3 too.
Spinning is good, but encourages theft so maybe they want to think about that! My fave feature is just fidgeting the lens cover open and shut again and again, and marvelling at the fact that it's conspicously solid metal and hence feels different to the rest of the phone.
Posted by: anthony | November 27, 2005 at 11:59 PM
The Sony Ericsson W800i is similar to the K750i in terms of functionality, but falls short on the spinning front. No spinning fun.
Posted by: ed | November 28, 2005 at 10:21 AM
i usually spin all my phones (all nokias). i was really miffed when the 6630 came out with a rubber gasket thingy that was so anti-spin, it was one of the main things i didn't like about the phone. moved on, of course. the n70 spins quite well, thank you.
as for fidgitability, i've spent many hours (personal interest) trying to understand it and see how one could capitalize on the behaviour. yes!
Posted by: charlie | November 28, 2005 at 01:53 PM