Riccardo Mori

A brief review of my 2019

January 14, 2020

Briefly

2019 was a strange year for me.

Looking at it superficially, nothing went wrong. I carried on with my life, managed to stay afloat, my translation work went somewhat satisfactorily, I was able to expand my technology horizons by getting to know other platforms better through the acquisition of new older devices; even the summer holidays went better than usual.

My interest in photography was rekindled: while I still love shooting film, the mostly unexpected and serendipitous acquisition of a few interesting digital cameras (Olympus E‑420, Pentax Q, Fujifilm X‑E1, Fujifilm FinePix F30) gave way to further experimentation — and that was a lot of fun.

From a personal workflow standpoint, in 2019 I was able to fully take advantage of my post-MacBook Pro setup — iMac as main workstation at home, 11-inch MacBook Air as mobile solution — and things have worked fantastically well. To the point that that iPad upgrade I was considering back in 2018 turned out to be unnecessary and has been delayed indefinitely. This happened thanks to the extreme versatility of the 11-inch MacBook Air, a machine I would never consider buying when new, which has now become, just a year after purchase, the second best Mac I’ve ever had (nothing beats my 12-inch PowerBook G4, of course).

But 2019 has also been a year of disappointment. I’m still very much interested in technology in general: the big picture, where tech is going, what’s being produced, and so forth. I haven’t really lost my enthusiasm and the ability to get excited over some new products or solutions. And I still am very deeply interested in subjects like design and usability in connection with technology.

But a lot of the people in technology, how technology is talked about, the debates over whatever it is the latest silly topic du jour, etc., have been wearing me down considerably. Engaging in tech-centric discussions, whether online or offline, has increasingly felt like an exercise in futility, no matter how articulately you present your point of view. This, in turn, has led me to write less on this blog. And while I’ve always maintained that I shall write an article only when I feel I really have something to say — as opposed to just keep this space updated with filler link pieces and one-line commentary when I’m not inspired to write long-form — I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to write more. At the time of writing, the entire body of articles I’ve written in 2019 consists of the ‘Latest 30 Posts’ you can see in my Archives page. It’s a bit disheartening.

Even worse, 2019 has been a terrible year with regard to my creative writing and fiction. Not that 2018 was better, but there were different reasons for its terribleness. Here, it truly feels like a ‘lost’ year. All my projects have progressed little, if at all. This time, it really wasn’t writer’s block, nor laziness on my part; and yet I lacked focus and organisation. I simply let work and other stuff take most of my mental energies, so that little was left for writing fiction at the end of the day. Which is rather stupid, in retrospect, given that writing is what I do best.

I try to maintain a ‘glass is half full’ kind of attitude and, when looking back at 2019, I tell myself that, sure, it wasn’t a great year for my output, but was a good ‘input’ year — meaning I spent it mostly learning new things, ‘consuming’ more ‘content’, researching stuff and feeding my inspiration. But I can’t help feeling dissatisfied. I can’t help feeling that last year was a big waste of time, right when I’ve reached that middle-age phase when time is perceived as an increasingly precious resource.

My only resolution at this point is to write more; or rather, to revisit my priorities in order to put my writing back where it belongs — sharing first place with my daily job. I’ve been keeping creative notes here and there, but I really need to finish my first novel of the Low Fidelity series; I need to act on these notes I’ve kept nursing and write the short stories that should become the third book in my Minigrooves series.

2019 wasn’t a great year for me, but I am thankful for all the people in my social network who have been supportive, who have lent an ear when I needed venting on Twitter, who have helped me in a way or another. That’s always appreciated and never taken for granted. Here’s to a better 2020!

Shopping: an increasingly overthought endeavour

December 27, 2019

by Riccardo Mori

Et Cetera

When I saw this recent article by Casey Johnston, Shopping Sucks Now being linked and commented by a few trusted people I follow, I admit I felt a bit bemused. I really like Johnston’s writing and style, and I know that, while the search for a good pair of gloves was a real necessity, it also served as an example. And yes, it’s true, there is so much choice today that choosing a product wisely, especially online, can be challenging.

But as I read her article, I started to wonder if perhaps the overthinking behind the whole shopping process is itself more overwhelming than the abundance of choice^[1].

For a long time, our problem was there were not enough things to choose from. Then with big box stores, followed by the internet, there were too many things to choose from. Now there are still too many things to choose from, but also a seemingly infinite number of ways to choose, or seemingly infinite steps to figuring out how to choose. The longer I spend trying to choose, the higher the premium becomes on choosing correctly, which means I go on not choosing something I need pretty badly, coping with the lack of it or an awful hacked-together solution (in the case of gloves, it’s “trying to pull my sleeves over my hands but they are too short for this”) for way, way too long, and sometimes forever.

The degree to which you feel this problem definitely depends on your income, or at least, being in the privileged position of not having to make do with the only thing you can afford. But for people with even a limited ability to make an investment purchase, if it’s worth it, there’s even more pressure to get it right. Knowing you wasted a big chunk of money on a cheaper, worse thing that falls apart when you could have spent a little more money on a thing that is good and lasts feels like failure. You’ve then wasted your money, wasted your time, you’ve contributed to global warming, and now you have to start the entire thing over again and hope you don’t somehow end up making the exact same mistake.

I don’t really feel this problem that much. And I think I fit the profile of the consumer who should feel this problem more:

I’m a budget-conscious customer. Being a freelancer, my income fluctuates constantly, but even when I have more money to spend on shopping for stuff, I tend to be penny-wise all the same; it’s my upbringing. Therefore, finding a good deal when I look for something is important to me. I hate wasting money.
When it comes to articles of clothing, I’m a particularly difficult customer. While my body shape isn’t ugly, it is such that finding trousers, shirts, jackets that are a good fit straight away is very hard for me. Sometimes I joke that I’d love to be rich only to be able to afford a personal tailor. So, again, when I’m shopping for clothes, it’s rarely a painless process.
Typically I’m not a cheapskate either. When looking for something to buy, I don’t take the shortcut of aiming low and going for the cheapest option.

But perhaps it’s because my way of shopping is still pretty much old-school.

I do most of my shopping at local, brick-and-mortar shops. I usually shop online for items I can’t find here; for items that are only available on the used market; and for items that are only available online (obviously). If I had to quantify, my offline/online shopping ratio is probably 70/30, maybe even 80/20.

For the reason stated above, I absolutely do not shop online for clothes (or eyewear, for that matter). I just can’t buy something without trying it or feeling it in my hand first. I know that a common policy for online clothing sellers is that you can easily return your purchases if you’re not satisfied with the items, but I find this to be an unnecessary hassle. I usually waste less time by going to a physical shop. Sure, there was an initial exploration phase where I tried several shops and clothing stores only to get out empty-handed, but now I know that all those places don’t have anything my size, and I know a few good places that do.

While I like to do my homework when I really need something specific, I still value competent advice provided by other humans right where I’m shopping. Yes, sometimes you’re in a shop ‘just browsing’ and you keep being approached by overeager clerks offering to help you. But there have been occasions when they were indeed helpful. The Tucano backpack I’m using most frequently now was suggested by a kind and informed clerk who told me it was a better value than the one I was interested in, while being very similar products in many other aspects. And she was right. In truth, I hadn’t even seen that Tucano backpack while I was browsing.

I own an especially good hat and an especially good pair of leather shoes — I’ve had both for at least 20 years — that were my easiest purchases, in a way. I went to a local hat shop, and told the owner what I was looking for in general terms. His decades-old expertise narrowed the choice for me as he presented me with a limited selection of suitable candidates. And, surely enough, the hat I wanted was among those. Same thing happened with the leather shoes. These items weren’t the best in their respective categories, but were quality products nonetheless, whose durability far exceeded my expectations. Were they expensive? Well, they weren’t Made-in-China cheap, but didn’t cost me a fortune either. Sometimes people don’t realise that the time you spend by willing to ask for help to a shop clerk (or, better, a shop owner) and willing to listen to their advice, isn’t always time wasted. Quite the contrary.

Most of my shopping happens before shopping. Do I need that new pair of shoes? Do I need that accessory? While I perfectly know that sometimes you don’t have to need something to want it; that sometimes you just want to make a ‘feel-good’ purchase; I nevertheless always ask myself those questions. This kind of self-check never hurts, especially if you’re a bit of a hoarder like I am and you’re renting an apartment. (Nothing like having to move out at a relatively short notice to make you regret many of your purchases and hoarding habits.)

I think that shopping experiences like the example Johnston makes in her article are increasingly common for people who shop almost exclusively online. They end up trapped by what they craved for in the first place: a wider choice, the comfort of shopping from your home, the illusion of saving time (and sometimes money). Back to my example of my good hat and leather shoes, if I had shopped for them online, it probably would have taken me several days of Web searches and comparisons before making a decision, and I’m fairly sure I would have ended up with worse products.

If it wasn’t clear enough (and it’s possible, since I’ve a penchant for digression), my main preventive measure to avoid overthinking or entering rabbit holes every time I have to shop for something, is to give myself artificial boundaries like time or space/scope:

Time — If I need a certain product, I will research possible candidates for a reasonably limited amount of time (e.g. a couple of days), then I will proceed to buy the best candidate found within that self-imposed time allotment. There may be the occasional exception; when I need something I’m not really familiar with (such as a UPS unit), the search for a suitable candidate may extend for a longer time period.
Space/scope — I won’t deny the convenience of purchasing stuff online. When you know what you want, it can be exhilarating just how quick and painless the process is. When I needed a new charging cable for my Pebble Time smartwatch, I opened eBay, searched for it, found a seller with a good reputation and reasonably close to me (= shorter waiting times once the item is shipped), clicked Buy It Now, and placed my order — all this in maybe less than five minutes. Other times, however, the sanest option is just searching for stuff locally. I don’t get people who spend hours looking for a good screwdriver on Amazon (of all places), then having the item shipped the next day with Amazon Prime; when you can buy one by going to a local hardware store and choosing among the many offerings, and you can just ask for advice in the store, if you’re not sure.

In fact, asking for someone else’s help can be a time saver. And I mean asking someone who has experience and expert knowledge regarding what you’re looking for. I’ve been told that asking advice from shopkeepers about something you’re looking for in their shops isn’t a great idea because they’re probably biased and they just want you to buy the thing from them. In my experience, this has happened very rarely. A bookseller once told me: I want happy customers. Happy customers are returning customers. And returning customers in turn make me happy.

I wanted to briefly return to something Johnston writes in a paragraph I already quoted at the beginning:

The longer I spend trying to choose, the higher the premium becomes on choosing correctly, which means I go on not choosing something I need pretty badly, coping with the lack of it or an awful hacked-together solution (in the case of gloves, it’s “trying to pull my sleeves over my hands but they are too short for this”) for way, way too long, and sometimes forever.

This has never happened to me, thankfully. At least not with things “I need pretty badly”. Need should always be a stronger force than choice. Choice should never be this paralysing. When I have serious difficulty choosing a product among a series of candidates, and I’m pressed for time, and I need it (so I just can’t say Okay, let’s drop this for now, I’ll keep searching another day), then I’ll usually go for the ‘average’ offering. Thus, not the cheapest or suspiciously cheap product, and not the most expensive product either — especially when I have the feeling I’d only be paying for a brand name.

But that’s me. The more I’m writing about this, the more I have the feeling that I’m stating obvious things and ‘strategies’, or that I’m starting to overthink… so I’ll end this here.

1. One can also argue that maybe it’s the abundance of choice that leads to overthinking and ultimately to ‘shopping paralysis’. But I’ve also noticed an increasing number of people who approach shopping with an overthinking attitude even before facing the subsequent problem of abundance of choice. ↩︎

Other platforms — BlackBerry 10

December 15, 2019

by Riccardo Mori

Software

BlackBerry Passport

Two years ago, a renewed curiosity to explore other operating systems and their user interfaces led me to acquire a Nokia Lumia 925 running Windows Phone 8.1 and take a belated closer look at this OS. The plan was to carry the Lumia with me as a second phone, spend a couple of weeks with it, and report my observations. You know, the same process you go through when reviewing any product. What happened next surprised me. When the test period was over, I couldn’t let go of the Lumia and the Windows Phone 8.1 experience. I knew the platform was essentially dead, but I was able to set up the phone with all the apps providing essential services and functionalities to me, and using WP8.1 was surprisingly refreshing, so I kept it as my secondary phone, carrying it around alongside my iPhone 8.

Something had just clicked. Realising how wrong and prejudiced I had been towards Windows Phone, I began to wonder: maybe all these years as a loyal Apple user have been making me feel so cosy in my comfort zone, so certain I was using the superior platform, that I was completely blind to the designing and engineering work of other competitors.

And so I started exploring more. I started to do what any intellectually honest individual should do: taking a deeper look firsthand before criticising anything. While trying to impact my limited budget as little as possible, and with the help of kind people who donated their old device, in the following months I was able to acquire:

a Nokia Lumia 830 to try Windows 10 Mobile on it;
a ThinkPad T61, and then a T400, to try the Windows 8.1 experience on a traditional computer; once I received the T400, I installed and tried Ubuntu Linux on the T61;
a ThinkPad X240 to try Windows 10;
an HP TouchPad, to finally experience webOS on a tablet-sized device (I love my Palm Prē 2, but I think webOS shouldn’t be experienced solely on a device with such a small display);
a BlackBerry Passport, to have a look at BlackBerry OS (something I was so not interested in, I didn’t even know how the OS looked);
a Nokia N9 smartphone, to see what was that made this device and its OS — MeeGo — so intriguing as to elevate the N9 to cult status.

So, after these past few months I’d say that — while I still have plenty left to explore and write about the UIs of other mobile platforms that didn’t manage to stay relevant like iOS or Android — one thing is clear by now: the two ‘winning’ platforms are ultimately the least interesting. And in a few aspects, they’re even worse than the ‘losers’. This is what you get, I presume, when you become mainstream.

The BlackBerry platform

The BlackBerry platform is perhaps the one I have ignored the most over the years. During the pre-iPhone smartphone years, when friends and acquaintances sported their Nokia E‑something or N‑something, their Palm Treos, their SonyEricsson P800 and P900, their BlackBerrys, etc., I still had simple feature phones… and my Newton PDAs. Cramming full QWERTY keyboards in phones of a relatively small size looked very impractical to me. All those tiny keys, how could you be fast and efficient at typing? Interfaces looked awkward, crowded. My interest in owning a smartphone was piqued only when rumours of Apple entering the picture started circulating. At that point, I just waited until that rumoured ‘iPhone’ became a real thing.

I hope BlackBerry fans won’t be offended, but I never found anything interesting in that platform. The fact that a lot of BlackBerry handsets have always been targeted at a business/enterprise audience was another factor that kept me at a distance. It’s a bit like scientific or accounting calculators… if you don’t have to do scientific or accounting calculations, it’s unlikely you’ll want to buy one.

There was even a time, the final years of the co-CEOs Lazaridis and Balsillie era, where I, by then a loyal iPhone user, watched with amused snobbery as RIM repeatedly tried to stay relevant in the smartphone arena with devices that didn’t seem very forward-thinking.

BlackBerry reappeared on my radar around 2013, when BlackBerry 10 OS was showcased along with the Z10 smartphone. While still being very satisfied with iOS, I’ve always thought that healthy competition is essential in tech, so that all parties have the incentive to improve constantly.

The BlackBerry Passport

But it was when BlackBerry introduced the Passport in late 2014 that I turned my head and exclaimed, Okay, that is a cool phone. The Passport was clearly designed to elicit that kind of response, but still, I liked the fact that the company was trying something different. Having my usual tight budget, however, meant that I couldn’t get one to play with and maybe keep as a secondary phone, so I just thought, One day, one day…

When an acquaintance contacted me via Twitter and told me something along the lines of “I’ve noticed your interest in other platforms. I have a BlackBerry Passport I was about to sell. I took it out of the drawer after more than a year and the thing won’t even boot. Probably I’ve bricked it when I tried to revive it, so… it’s yours for £25 if you want to try your hand at reviving it. Otherwise I guess I’ll recycle it or something…”

Challenge accepted. And achievement unlocked, after some patience and perseverance.

I took this photo ten minutes after the phone came to life. While waiting for its battery to charge (it was totally drained), I went through the setup process. The first thing that gave me a positive impression were the tutorials helping you familiarise with BlackBerry 10 paradigms and gestures, and actually correcting you if you don’t execute a gesture properly. (For brevity, I’ll refer to the BlackBerry 10 OS as ‘BB10’ from now on.)

The hardware

The Passport is well-built. When you handle it, it has a premium-feeling heft. I like the grippy material of its back cover. Hardware buttons are clicky enough, but I wish the power button were clickier. It has a short travel. It feels a bit mushy. The Passport is not really a one-hand device. While I certainly can use it one-handed, due to its width and angular edges it doesn’t get super comfortable in the long run (it is however much more practical to handle than the Xiaomi Mi A2). But once you cradle it in your hands and use it with both, the overall experience improves dramatically:

A two-handed experience

The square, 4.5‑inch, 1440×1440 IPS LCD display is bright and very nice. At 453 PPI, text is incredibly crisp and so very readable even at font sizes my eyes would find rather hard to tolerate elsewhere.

If I’m not mistaken, spec-wise the Passport is the most powerful BB10 device. It features a 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage which can be expanded — the Passport has a microSD slot, too.

The rear camera, as stated by Wikipedia, is 13 megapixel, with ƒ/2.0 aperture, 1080p video recording at 60fps, autofocus, and optical image stabilisation. In practice, it takes decent photos and does its job properly. Nothing bad, nothing exceptional.

The stereo speakers are another thing that surprised me very positively, together with the audio quality in general. The speakers deliver a loud, full, yet balanced sound. Music played through the headphones sounds crisp, with no noise or distortion I can perceive.

There isn’t a tray to insert the SIM and the optional microSD card. Instead, you remove the upper part of the back cover to access these slots. This is the only user-accessible part of the chassis, and it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap. By looking at the back of the phone, you wouldn’t even guess this part is removable:

Insert SIM

But let’s talk about that keyboard.

Here’s the thing with the BlackBerry Passport’s keyboard: I honestly thought it would be awkward. Firstly because apart from the Palm Prē 2, I’ve never used phones with physical QWERTY keyboards. I went from keypads and T9 text entry to an iPhone. Secondly because the Passport’s keyboard is a hybrid of physical and virtual keys, as you can see in the picture:

BB keyboards

Yet, to my surprise, this layout works. It’s an entirely different experience from an iPhone or Android phone, but I’m getting accustomed to it quickly.

It’s all about how you hold the phone. This phone’s form factor in particular invites you to cradle it between your hands and thumb-type, as we’ve seen above. And the [Shift] key, and the [123] key are positioned in such a way that you reach them easily with your thumbs.

Extended keyboard

When you tap the [123] key, you get the extended symbols/numbers keys, and if you just look at them, you may think it’s a confused mess. Look at where they put the zero. Instead you just reach over there, and it’s unexpectedly comfortable and makes sense, believe it or not.

Note that, ever since I started using smartphones with virtual keyboards, I’ve never been able to type quickly with just my thumbs. I’ve always typed by holding the phone with my left hand, and using my right index and middle fingers. Despite having small fingertips, the lack of physical feedback in the keys and their tight spacing thwarted my attempts at a precise thumb-typing. The Passport is the first smartphone I can thumb-type on, and at a respectable speed.

I’m still learning the various keyboard tricks and shortcuts, but what I’m seeing so far is much more thoughtful than I expected. You can type an uppercase letter by long-pressing its key. One way to select text is to tap Shift and swipe your finger over the keyboard. When you’re writing and you need to move the cursor, e.g. to make corrections or insert a word, you double-tap on the keyboard and the magnifying lens pops up:

Magnifying lens

Then you just move it by scrolling & swiping your finger on the keys — the keyboard acts like a trackpad. It’s a detail that looks counter-intuitive and gimmicky on paper, but in actual use I’d say it’s fairly brilliant, because the textured surface of the keyboard as a whole makes you swipe and scroll more purposefully and precisely.

Predictive text

When you’re typing, predictive text makes suggestions like on iOS, Android, etc. To speed things up, if you see that the suggested word in the middle is the one you want, you just swipe up on the keyboard. Once you learn the gesture, it’s pretty handy.

I’m also finding the predictive engine and autocorrect rather smart when handling multiple language keyboards.

The software

The default installation of BB10 comes with all the expected essentials. There are Box and Dropbox clients, and the usual suspects like Twitter and Facebook. There are also LinkedIn and Evernote apps. The first obstacle you hit when attempting to use them is that they don’t have access to the latest APIs of these services, so in late 2019 none of them will work, except Evernote.

The most effective workaround is to use Android apps, since BB10 features an Android runtime that lets you run Android apps (not the latest and greatest, though, unless they can run under Android 4.3). In theory, you can install them directly using the built-in Amazon Appstore app, but sadly this is another client that has stopped working. By perusing the CrackBerry forums, I was able to find a workaround and install Google’s own Play Store to manage Android apps. Then I was able to download Firefox, Android’s Box client, a good Twitter client called Twidere, the official Spotify client, among other apps. Though the default BB10 Weather app works well and has a nice, austere look, currently I’m also enjoying an Android app called Today Weather, whose UI both reminds me of Yahoo! Weather and is elegant enough to be mistaken for a native BlackBerry app:

Today Weather

My Passport is currently running the latest BB10 version, 10.3.3.2137 (at least, the system tells me that the OS is up to date), and despite what you may have read in earlier BB10 reviews, Android apps appear to run quite smoothly and I’m not noticing any significant difference in performance compared to native BlackBerry apps.

Also, during normal use, the OS doesn’t feel particularly fragmented. BlackBerry apps and Android apps happily coexist and the OS does a good job at maintaining cohesion. The only moment where the illusion is briefly broken is when you install or update an app from the Play Store. The app will begin to download from within the Play Store, but the final steps of the installation are handled by BlackBerry World, BlackBerry’s native app store client.

The user interface

After being positively impressed by the BlackBerry Passport’s hardware, the biggest surprise for me (long-time iOS user, never touched a BlackBerry handset before) was BB10’s UI. Visually, it perfectly epitomises the business æsthetic: a minimal, mostly black-and-white colour palette with tasteful accents — usually blue — which thoughtfully and consistently direct the user’s look towards what’s relevant or important on the screen (a setting, a button, a change of state, etc.). The system font is nice and readable even at very small sizes.

Here are a few more examples and comments:

BB10 App screen
This is the first app screen on the BlackBerry Passport. Like on iOS, you have dots representing the various app screens. Unlike iOS, dots aren’t generic — each app screen is clearly numbered; the Home screen is indicated by a Home icon, and the BlackBerry Hub has an envelope/email icon. Both the Home screen and the BlackBerry Hub can be accessed by swiping from the left. Phone and Camera are persistent icons for quick access to these frequently-used apps.

BB10 Home screen - Multitasking
Interestingly, BB10 considers the Home Screen what in other platforms would be considered the Multitasking interface. Here you can see miniatures of all active apps, and from here you can quickly switch from one app to another, or close their processes. Apps with changes or unread notifications are indicated by a red badge with an asterisk.

BB10 Quick Settings
BB10 has an array of Quick Settings that are accessible by swiping down from the status bar. What appears here — and in what order — is customisable by going into Settings > Quick Settings. The interface may seem verbose and take up a lot of space, but I actually like that BlackBerry wanted to prioritise clarity above all else.

BB10 World Clock

BB10 Stopwatch

BB10 Timer
BB10 clock, world clock, stopwatch, and timer. I think they’re better designed than their counterparts on iOS and Android.

BB10 File manager
This is the File Manager (grid view) in BB10. The design reminds me of Windows 10 Mobile a bit, but icons are less stylised and more elegant.

BB10 Lock Screen options
I like that on BB10 you can set a custom message to appear on the lock screen.

BB10 Device Monitor
App Manager > Device Monitor looks a bit like Activity Monitor on the Mac. It’s nice that I can see all this information at a glance.

BB10 Battery Saving options
I also like that there is a modicum of customisation in what gets disabled when in Battery Saving Mode.

Detailed explanation
I like that there are clear explanations for certain system features, so that the user knows exactly what they do and what is going on — in this case, when Battery Saving Mode is enabled.

App permissions
When you enter Settings > Security and Privacy > Application Permissions, you’ll see a list of all the installed apps. When selecting one (Maps in this example), you can examine its permission settings and change them as needed. Though you can do the same on iOS and Android, I really like BB10’s clean approach and presentation.

Overall, BB10 has a sober, elegant interface, and features consistent interactions and gestures. It’s logical and you familiarise with it rather quickly. Discoverability is generally good, and what you can’t discover on your own, you can find in the built-in tutorials. These are very good and really train you, so that you can use the system in the most effective way possible.

Apps are designed in a way that, in my opinion, maximises reachability, especially on this particular smartphone. The most important controls in the interface are located on the bottom bar, which places them right above the physical keyboard. And that is where your thumb or thumbs are gravitating most of the time. So it’s rare that you’ll have to adjust your grip in an attempt to reach some far-off key UI element. A lot of the apps I’ve tried out so far — the better-designed at least — tend to follow this logic.

BlackBerry Hub

Speaking of well-designed aspects of the BB10 OS, a special mention must be reserved to Notifications and the BlackBerry Hub. Coming from a mainstream mobile OS, it may seem weird to have a single place like the BlackBerry Hub collating email messages, SMS/MMS, calls and notifications. But after a little while you realise that this concept makes a lot of sense. Of course, this works well largely because the BlackBerry Hub is very well-designed.

Visually, it’s essentially an email client displaying messages in chronological order. Logically, it’s like looking at a page from an organiser showing what’s happening during the day. It’s like a big messaging system, where every item is treated like a message or event. Icons differentiate between emails, notifications, text messages, so that it’s instantly clear which is which; but looking at them separately is just as easy — a quick tap on the Hamburger menu will open a sidebar and you’ll be able to move between categories. I was especially surprised by how I liked this kind of implementation because I usually prefer to keep things separate, email messages in particular. But on the Passport, I found out I actually don’t mind looking at a unified Inbox and I happily added my five main email accounts.

BlackBerry Hub main UI
BlackBerry Hub’s main interface.

BlackBerry Hub - Hamburger menu
Tap the Hamburger menu and you can check messages/notifications by category.

BlackBerry Hub - options
Tap the three-dot button on the right and you have access to different options and commands.

Notification red LED

Add to this the well-known hardware blinking red LED that alerts the user to the presence of a new notification (see picture above), and in my opinion you have the best notification system ever. It’s not intrusive, but it’s effectual, and you hardly miss anything. If you don’t check the Hub right away when you have notifications, you’ll see which apps have new notifications because a red badge will appear on their icon. Here the approach is similar to Android’s blue dot, in that there isn’t an ‘unread items’ counter on the badge like on iOS, just an asterisk. As I said in my last piece on Android, I much prefer this approach — it’s less stressful.

Advanced Interaction

Advanced interaction
Those last two features are quite handy, especially the last one. But on the whole, all these are thoughtful and useful additions. If I researched this info correctly, ‘Lift to wake’ should predate the similar ‘Raise to wake’ on iOS by more or less two years.

‘Flip to save power’ was implemented earlier than on iOS. On iOS it appeared in 2015 in iOS 9, and it wasn’t as straightforward as it is here. The feature was called Facedown detection and what it did was to keep the iPhone’s screen turned off when you received notifications while your iPhone was placed face-down. This saved a bit of battery power, but that was it. It also worked only on iPhones equipped with motion coprocessors (iPhone 5s and up), and if fitness tracking was turned on. On BB10, it’s just a matter of flipping this switch, and the battery saving is more similar to iOS’s Low Power Mode.

BB Passport - Work Wide
Image taken from BlackBerry’s website in 2014. Having a wider screen was marketed as a productivity bonus, and — at least in some cases — I’m inclined to agree.

Final thoughts

Obviously this piece doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive look at BB10’s user interface, but I hope the selected examples provided are enough to illustrate how tasteful and thoughtful its design is on the whole. When I was tweeting my very first impressions immediately after reviving the Passport, I received some funny feedback from people who basically were asking me what the hell I was doing. In case it still isn’t clear, it’s my love for user interfaces that drives me to explore other platforms, whether dead or alive or on life support. I still remain an iPhone/iOS user first.

However, the more I explore other platforms, the more I appreciate what they tried to do UI-wise. And yes, I used to be one of those Apple users who sincerely believed Apple was always the best at creating user interfaces. But the truth is that, in some cases, other platforms implemented a feature in a more consistent/intelligent/innovative way than Apple. The fact that a platform was left behind or failed doesn’t mean that everything about it was a failure.

I understand why BlackBerry decided to switch completely to Android as opposed to carrying on with a native OS solution for their smartphones, but from what I’ve been able to observe in the two months I’ve used this BlackBerry Passport, it is indeed a pity that BB10 has been left behind. Its design, while some consider it ‘boring’, is a perfect fit — visually and functionally — for business users; but it is also clean and easy to grasp for regular people or users (like me) who had never touched a BlackBerry smartphone before. It might be less distinctive or visually striking as Windows Phone 7 and 8 have been with their Metro UI, but it is very much in line with BlackBerry’s identity. And just like I was genuinely shocked by how much I have been enjoying the user experience and interface design in Windows Phone 8.1, my experience with BB10 on this particular handset has been surprisingly positive and enjoyable.

Observations on Android, five years later

November 21, 2019

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Android as seen by a long-time iOS user, Part 2

About three months ago, I decided to take another close look at Android. After spending some time catching up with the latest and greatest smartphones powered by Android, and after reading and watching an inordinate amount of reviews, it was clear that a lot had changed for the better since my last good look at this OS back in 2014 (and with 2011 hardware).

Despite all apparent improvements, though, when the time came to choose which device to get, I didn’t want to be using some specific brand’s flavour of Android; I wanted the pure experience. So my search narrowed down to a few affordable AndroidOne handsets. Thanks to a fantastic limited-time offer on Xiaomi’s website, I grabbed a brand new Mi A2 (black, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage) at a lower price than what I had been seeing at local second-hand shops.

You can read its tech specifications here, but suffice it to say that this is an overall excellent phone with features and a performance I’ve seen in much costlier devices. The only thing I don’t like about it is the size. My comfort threshold is low: anything bigger than my iPhone 8 is unpleasant to use. The Mi A2 has a 5.99-inch display, it’s 20.3 mm taller and 8.1 mm wider (but thankfully it has the same 7.3 mm thickness as the iPhone); at least its clearly iPhone-inspired design makes it sleek and tolerable enough to handle. Oh, and it doesn’t have a notch, which is a big bonus in my book.

Biometric authentication is made through a fingerprint sensor located on the back of the phone, where your index finger is supposed to land as you hold the phone. I always thought this sensor placement was awkward and less practical than the iPhone’s Home button, but I was wrong. I got accustomed to it quickly. I’ve also noticed that the unlocking is as fast as on the iPhone (if not sometimes faster).

Android, five years later

The last time I truly interacted with Android was with an old 2011 Sony Xperia Neo V that ran Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and it was exactly five years ago, in November 2014. This Xiaomi Mi A2 currently runs Android 9 with all the latest updates.

In five years, and after five versions, the Android experience has improved dramatically. Not only with regard to the UI — the whole system under the bonnet feels way more robust and reliable.

One obviously huge difference between my first foray into Android back in 2014 with that old Sony Xperia and experiencing it now on a current device, is that there is practically no tinkering involved to make the phone usable, and this is even truer when you choose an AndroidOne smartphone, with Android at its purest.

From an interface design standpoint, in my 2014 review the impression was that Android 4.0.4 felt a bit disjointed — a collection of first- and third-party apps which lacked a unified UI and visual language, or a distinctive platform design. Buttons, UI elements, and behaviours felt generally different within each app. Google’s Material Design has thankfully rectified this ‘randomness’, and Android today looks and feels more organic and consistent.

At the same time, however, what’s been happening in mobile UI visual design these past few years is that everything has become flat, colourful shapes floating in a whitespace expanse. With third-party apps in particular, it’s often hard to distinguish between their iOS and Android versions.

One thing Android still does better than iOS is Notifications. They have a way of being noticeable without being annoying or overwhelming once they pile up (at least for how I use my phone). To the point that on my Mi A2 I have left all notifications enabled, and it’s all still less intrusive than on my iPhone where I have allowed notifications only for a handful of carefully-picked apps.

Example of Android’s Notifications pane — As you pull it down from the top of the screen, all the little icons that crowd the status bar expand into notification messages, and for immediately actionable notifications you’ve given the relevant options straight away (see YouTube’s notification). As you can see, there are still three notifications left to expand, represented by the icons at the bottom of the pane (new Gmail messages, a notification from Twitch, a Like from Twitter). Predictably, if you tap on a notification you’ll enter the related app; if you swipe you’ll dismiss it. Once you expand everything, you’re given the option to ‘Clear All’, which is a much bigger label than on iOS, thus easier to tap.

I still think the way Android treats the phone’s status bar leads to clutter and the occasional confusion; but in the 5 years that have passed since my last dive into Android, this situation has markedly improved, especially if you’re able to keep up with the notifications you receive and clear them as you read them.

One design choice I particularly appreciate in Android when it comes to Notifications is the use of a notification dot as opposed to iOS’s notification badge. It’s a minor detail, but I find that having a light blue dot next to an app’s icon indicating that there are notifications for this app is much less stressful than a red badge with a counter indicating e.g. 6 unread notifications, 11 unread emails, or 4 unread messages. In both cases, I’m free to read any unread notification whenever I please, but iOS’s numbered red badge subtly conveys a sense of urgency that’s largely absent in Android’s blue notification dot.

The Notification dot tells me there are notifications from Twitter. In the previous image you can see that it was a liked tweet.

One could argue that Android delegates this urgency to the appearance of notification icons which progressively clutter the phone’s status bar, but I actually find this method to be conducive to a more efficient notification management. It’s a gentle nudge to take a look at your notifications without letting them accumulate too much (and risking missing an important one among the filler, like it sometimes happens on iOS). I hope I’m making some sense; I’m aware I’m deep into personal preference territory here.

Some visual design choices

Homescreens

As you can see in the image above, it’s pretty clear what I’m going to point out — the app icons are too close together. A whole screen of icons feels crowded and cramped, but most of all… those truncated app names! Here the situation is much better on iOS: with longer app names, iOS reduces letter spacing and manages to fully display the name of apps like Pocket Casts, SoundHound, Hipstamatic, Quartz Brief, AdobeCapture, and AirPort Utility, the latter probably being the app with the longest non-truncated name on my iPhone.

Android can’t even display the full name of “Headphones”, Sony’s app for managing their wireless noise-cancelling headphones. Heck, even Google’s own Play Store name is truncated! It’s not pictured above because it’s on another screen, but Instagram — a 9‑letter word — is displayed as “Instagra…”, which is even more ridiculous, considering that you can certainly fit an ‘m’ in the space occupied by the ellipsis.

Despite having now spent almost three months with my Xiaomi Mi A2, Android’s application tray (is that its name?) still manages to throw me off a bit. As a long-time iOS user, I’m accustomed to seeing all apps on my iPhone’s springboard. On iOS, what you see on the screen are essentially the contents of an Application folder. On Android, the screen’s real estate is like a Desktop where you put shortcuts (in the Windows sense) to the apps you’ve installed and use more frequently. To look at all the apps, you swipe from the bottom and you see them in the tray; in other words, not everything that appears in the various phone screens is necessarily all you have installed. Things like Calculator, Clock, Contacts, Files, “Keep No…” (Keep Notes, I presume), Lens, News, Settings, etc., are not placed on the ‘desktop’ by default, and you access them via the tray.

The advantage of such design approach is that you can effectively customise what you typically see on the phone’s screen to your heart’s content. App icons don’t even snap to the closest consecutive empty space like on iOS, so you can put just three or four icons on a screen in places that, for instance, are more easily reachable by your finger.

The drawback is that, as you install new apps, the placement of the others inside the tray shifts, and you lose your place a bit. This often happened to me with Settings, so much so that I eventually had to place its shortcut on the phone’s ‘desktop’. Admittedly, it’s not that huge of a deal, but visually it makes for a crowded, cluttered experience — you swipe left and right and see apps; you swipe from the bottom, apps again, a sea of round colourful icons.

Contrast this with another mobile OS that distinguishes between a ‘desktop workspace’ and a separate list of apps: Windows Phone. There, the visual difference between app shortcuts/widgets (tiles) and the full list of actual apps is unequivocal.

Homescreen and app list on Windows Phone 8.1
Home screen and app list on Windows Phone 8.1

Homescreen and app list on Windows 10 Mobile
Home screen and app list on Windows 10 Mobile

Android’s navigation buttons

The Xiaomi Mi A2, like many other Android smartphones, features three persistent software buttons at the bottom of the screen. A Back button (◁), a Home button (◎), and a Multitasking button (☐). The Back button is used to go back inside an app, but also to exit an app. In my 2014 piece I wrote that this behaviour could be confusing and inconsistent. I don’t know whether apps have got better at this, but now it really isn’t problematic like it used to feel, and I still haven’t found myself kicked out of an app when I simply wanted to go back within the app’s menu hierarchy, for example.

The Home button also invokes Google Assistant when long-pressed, and I find this rather handy. I also like that when you invoke Google Assistant this way, the Assistant just quietly awaits your input, whether by text or voice command, and doesn’t say anything. This is useful when you want to avoid being loud in a public place, and/or want to keep your interactions with your phone to yourself.

The Multitasking button is perhaps my favourite. When interacting with a user interface, I generally much prefer (physical or virtual) buttons over gestures. And with the Multitasking UI in particular, on iOS I still prefer the old double-tap on the Home button rather than the swiping gesture introduced with the iPhone X. With Android’s square button it’s even simpler, as you just need to tap it once. There’s even a shortcut to close all open apps if you so wish:

Multitasking UI

Handling of background processes

All the issues I mention in my 2014 article have thankfully become non-issues in this regard. Since I purchased this Xiaomi handset I’ve never experienced unexpected behaviours, crashes, stuck processes, anything. The system feels consistently stable and I don’t feel compelled to check on it every 10 minutes to see if an app or background process is misbehaving. And, quite frankly, I’d be surprised if I still had to.

Storage handling

When using that Sony Xperia phone with Android Ice Cream Sandwich back in 2014, I was extremely frustrated by the way Android handled storage between internal memory and the microSD card. Unfortunately, this Xiaomi Mi A2 does not feature expandable storage via a microSD slot; it only has internal storage, so I can’t say whether the situation has improved on this front, but I’ll simply assume that it has. Again, it would be appalling and disappointing if it still were a mess like on that old Sony Xperia.

App selection and polish

In the past few years, I’d say from 2016 onwards, I’ve reached a sort of saturation point with iOS apps: I tend to explore the App Store much less frequently than I used to, and I’ve become very selective when it comes to adding a new app on my iPhone. In short, I have now settled with a selection of essential apps I use all the time, and I rarely feel the need to venture outside this comfort setup. Photo apps are possibly the only exception, but it feels it’s been a while since I last found some really unique photo apps worth keeping around. And in general, the trend towards app subscriptions — which I strongly dislike — has tempered my interest in looking for new apps for my iOS devices.

My iOS app setup looks more or less like this:

A few first-party essentials (Mail for email, Calendar for my calendars, Reminders for the occasional reminder, Safari for most of the browsing, etc.)
A bunch of clients for cloud services (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Simplenote…)
Messaging and social network apps (essentially Telegram, and then Twitter, Mastodon, and pnut clients)
RSS feed readers, read-later apps, podcast apps
A few utilities (unit converter, dictionaries, white noise apps, etc.)
Document-handling apps (document scanners, PDF readers, etc.)
Photo-taking and photo-editing apps

It looks like a long list, but it isn’t, really. The point is, when I started exploring Google’s Play Store to look for the same apps or Android equivalents of the kind of apps I use most often on iOS, I wasn’t disappointed. On this Android smartphone I was quickly able to come up with an essential app setup that was enough to keep me going even without my iPhone.

Sure, iOS still offers an incredible selection of good-quality third-party apps in several departments (e.g. I have found many more great photo apps on iOS than on Android so far), but overall the quality of Android apps has remarkably increased since the last time I explored its Store.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that on Android third-party apps seem to require on average many more permissions than on iOS, and I’ve often wondered why certain apps wanted me to let them access the microphone, camera, my Twitter account or my contacts.

Other than this, no real complaints here. The Play Store keeps being a nice tool to browse for apps. Apps’ pages are informative, and I like that they feature both the most positive and most critical review for an app, for example. App recommendations are plenty, and are divided into a few subcategories which — while seemingly confusing or overlapping at first glance — I suppose they’re generated by different algorithms. I like that the Related to this app section is clearly marked Ads, i.e. that they’re sponsored recommendations.

App recommendations

Final observations

In 2014 I concluded my article as follows:

I found the Android OS to be better than I expected. I was eager to test drive an Android phone because I was worried I was getting too prejudiced in my criticism against Android, so I wanted to experience it more extensively and thoroughly than just playing around for ten minutes with a handset borrowed from a friend. There are many things to like about Android, and its design and UI are definitely getting better version after version. If my iPhone stopped working and I had to resort to a cheaper Android phone for a while, I guess I could switch without too much hassle.

But it must be a current phone, with the latest Android version, certainly not this Xperia with Ice Cream Sandwich. The root of pretty much everything negative about my experience with this specific Android hardware and setup has been this: I’ve often had the feeling I wasn’t dealing with an intuitive, standalone, homogeneous device, but rather with a computer crammed into a smaller interface, having typical ‘computer problems’ to attend to or to watch out for.

And I went on saying that a smartphone owner shouldn’t be constantly babysitting and troubleshooting his or her device and tinker to optimise it as to achieve a consistently smooth experience. On the other front, iOS offered just that: an intuitive interface, a hassle-free user experience, and a superior selection of great-quality apps.

Five years ago, doing a complete platform switch and going from iOS to Android and vice-versa, implied a certain amount of friction that felt less problematic the more tech-savvy you were. The two experiences felt really different and, as far as I’m concerned, Android felt second-class. Even on more powerful handsets, basic stuff like scrolling and animations could end up being jerky and stutter with annoying frequency. The system looked more utilitarian than well-designed to provide an effortless, pleasant user experience.

Today, from my first-hand experience, I can say that this once very noticeable gap is essentially gone. Android has improved on all fronts, while iOS has for the most part rested on its laurels (and in certain areas has actually got buggier than it used to). The overall experience is similar between the two platforms. An increasing number of operations, interactions, and UI behaviours have become barely distinguishable from one another (share sheets, for example, look and work in a similar way). For three months I’ve been carrying both my iPhone 8 and the Mi A2 with me, keeping the iPhone as primary device, but for two weeks I purposefully inverted the roles, and I noticed that — save for a few favourite iOS apps — I could have left the iPhone at home.

Today, iOS and Android look and behave exactly for what they are: the two mainstream platforms. Using one or the other is now a matter of personal preference more than ever, and not a matter of sheer technical superiority. Apple’s hardware still has a bit of an innovative edge (the CPU, the camera system), but Android sort of counterbalances this by offering a variety of hardware choices that have markedly improved in recent years. That is, today you can find very good Android phones at all price ranges from several manufacturers whose offerings have kept getting better and better. On the other side, you’re stuck with what Apple decides to provide on a yearly basis. And if you don’t like certain design choices or certain features, you hold on to your current iPhone until Apple introduces something you like that compels you to upgrade.

Un-updatable apps

November 10, 2019

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Since I’ve been acquiring a few interesting devices lately (and I’ll be writing about them here in the next days, of course), I haven’t had the time to check on others as often as I usually do. The other day I checked the App Store app on both my third-generation iPad and iPhone 5 to see if there were updates available. There were indeed, and I’m glad that devices on iOS 9 and 10 are still getting a lot of them. On both devices, however, the updates for Flickr and AirPort Utility wouldn’t download or install. The process either got stuck or failed. On the iPad 3 with iOS 9.3.5 this is sadly all too common, but usually freeing up RAM or rebooting the device does the trick. Not this time. After several attempts, instead of getting stuck, the process started giving me feedback. This is what appeared on my iPhone 5 earlier:

Unable to download

Retrying led me nowhere. Meanwhile, on the iPad 3, I tried another workaround: I deleted AirPort Utility, went to the Purchased section in the App Store app, tapped the icon to reinstall AirPort Utility from the cloud, and the response was: This app is not compatible with this iPad. Then why the App Store app prompted me to update it? I tried with Flickr. Same response. Hmm.

Checking the App Store page for both apps it turns out that, while AirPort Utility shows iOS 9.0 and Flickr shows iOS 9.3 as minimum requirement, in both cases the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5 are absent from the (now extremely long and barely readable) list of supported devices. In short, both apps still support versions of iOS as old as iOS 9, but have dropped support for 32-bit devices.

And I can understand that. But how this situation is handled by the operating system is just poor. For starters, iOS should detect the incompatibility and stop signalling there’s an update available. Instead, you’re invited to download and install an update that won’t install, because it’s not compatible. Yesterday, when I tried re-downloading AirPort Utility from the Purchased section in the App Store and got the This app is not compatible with this iPad message, the system prevented me from even downloading the app. Today, as it should, it offers me to download the last compatible version of the app. And after downloading and installing the last compatible version… the App Store app once again updates the notification badge and tells me there are updates available for AirPort Utility and Flickr.

So, at the moment it appears I have two choices: either I remove those apps from my iPad 3 and iPhone 5, or I keep them on their last compatible version and keep seeing them pop up in the App Store update queue. But if I choose the latter, when there are other apps to update, and I tap Update All, the update process fails when it tries to update the un-updatable apps, and aborts; and I have to manually update the other apps that can be updated, one by one.

Is this an edge case? Probably. But it’s still a mediocre user experience. The user-facing dialogs are terse and generic. The app could not be downloaded at this time is utterly unhelpful and it’s like saying An error occurred — Why? What happened? What’s the source of the issue? Is the App Store server down? Is it a local issue that’s occurring on my specific device right now? Is it my internet connection?

This app is not compatible with this device. Fine. It wouldn’t hurt to add an additional note in the message saying something like The minimum hardware requirement for this app is an iPad Air (1st generation), or even better, This app no longer supports 32-bit devices. Wouldn’t this be a bit clearer? Instead you need to investigate and troubleshoot, and while it’s relatively easy for a tech-savvy person with a bit of time to find what’s wrong, a regular person who maybe is still using an older device will probably just delete the apps thinking they’ve stopped working altogether. Or they might ignore the updates, but then this could affect other ‘good updates’ in the App Store app update queue.

Situations like this require either a better communication via the OS interface, or the OS taking care of the matter invisibly, by stopping further update notifications when a device or iOS version are no longer supported by the latest app update.

(This post was written on a first-generation iPad using an app that no longer exists and on an iOS version (5.1.1) that, while simpler in features and UI, still feels more intuitive and robust than the current iOS.)