Sony Ericsson’s Android Rachael UI Makes Me Want To Ditch My IPhone

Oh god its Sara Bareilles :O

if there could be a median between the iphone UI and this UI. That would be a perfect phone. I got with Apple for its simplicity, but i would go with Windows for its now flashy UI. Similarly, i would go for a splurge of the two to make an interesting/artistic simplistic UI.

xbigman15x

Imagine, all of your friends are models with digitally distributable headshots...wow...

I loved my ericsson phones that ran UIQ ( a version of symbian ) Although i dislike sony as a company, the phone was awesome, to bad sony will be dead soon.

fleebailey33

Yum yum, me love to eat RAM!

Holy smartphones batman!!
This is really sweet stuff. This is what a phone UI should look like and act like. I am stuck to my iphone (damn ATT contract) for awhile but I am really glad to see someone do something positive with a phone UI of any kind. This could really hurt the iphone (yay!!)
Big factors will be lack of bugs in final release, proper hardware to run the UI and a handset people dont hate

justsomereportingguy

It's ok if you want Vista on a phone.

mcdj

@Kaiser-Machead: I'm still using mine, waiting for the right phone to switch to. I have the same Cingular nonsense but I figured I would reflash the OS at some point with the original Sony OS. If they had a version of iTunes that would run on linux, I'd probably have the iPhone right now. I'm not willing to downgrade my OS just to use a freakin' phone.

shawn_dude

@PyrateKitteh: You can always buy an unlocked one designed for O2 or T-mobile. The 3G bands might be off, though.

Once you buy your own phone you'll sadly have to continue to pay AT&T's or T-mobile's hidden cell phone repayment fee, even though you didn't get a subsidized phone. That's the part I hate the most.

shawn_dude

@beamin445:

I agree that this interface is beautiful, but I prefer the Sense UI from HTC over this one. It looks like it feels more Android-y.

Jonesy555

Nah, still prefer my iPhone GUI, it was groundbreaking.

As an avid Apple product fan, I have to admit that I am intrigued. That UI is incredible and looks very flexible. Don't know about ditching the iPhone but may be swayed in that direction!

@AngelaSalamander: i watched this video 3 more time and could not find any sluggishness. i'm an iphanboy, but this UI is effin beautiful

beamin445

@housewarmer: I know. I've been shopping around for a twitter client that supports push and none yet so far. It seems that most of these new android phones though have that capability built into the OS.

@MosesMonster: Push updates from twitter have nothing to do with apple. That's the responsibility of whomever wrote your twitter client.

@tande04: Easily? Or do you have to get a hacked ROM?

Kiamat

This one feels a bit too blue...hopefully its a bit more customizable...But otherwise I'm still liking the Sense UI from HTC...

And on another note...Whats with these soft keyboards?!! Flippin' A if these manufacturers actually have sense they'd slap a sliding keyboard in there too...I have an iPhone now and hated adapting to it and won't be switching to another phone without a keyboard...So far no one has made a passable soft keyboard other than Apple....and I don't see it getting any better

Ok now see, this is why google's android has so much potential. Devs have the freedom to modify the interface.

Please someone respond to this question:

Can all of the custom UI android phones (HTC hero, this sony ericsson prototype, any other android phone with a custom UI)
can all of them run all of the apps coming from the google marketplace/app store??

If so, then google's android has a decent future.

olternaut

Wow, I can't believe all the people who are excited about this! What crappy UI design! Too much eye candy at the expense of usability.

1. Icons lack coherent design. Some icons are circles, some are rectangular, others are irregular shapes. Some tilt to the left, some are head-on, some tilt to the right. Any UI designer worth his or her salt knows that crap like that should be avoided at all costs.

2. As one person stated above, the contact app is pretty, but useless if you have more than 15 contacts. Who wants to flick through 100+ contacts, 5 pictures at a time? And if there is a way to disable the picture contacts and just have them displayed as a list, then you lose the whole eye candy and it's just another contact app.

3. Effects are too laggy. They're pretty in a demo, but would be very annoying in real life. The keyboard is odd. It pops up slowly, then just vanishes quickly when you're done. Flicking between screens had too much flash and not enough speed. And this is on an emulator, probably with a more powerful processor than an actual phone would have.

4. Back to the contact app: it's a mess. Pictures are spread out in a jumble, lacking a graceful arch. Pictures are tilted at all angles. The text overlay on the pictures is at a completely different angle, which makes it painful on the eyes.

All in all, Sony has sacrificed functionality for flash. And they didn't even do the flash very well...

msisaac

I'm not blown away. Holograms damn it... I want star-freakn-wars holograms. Is that too much to ask ;0)

Sunburn_summer

@SportsCentre:

I agree. This UI looks too cluttered and is replacing intuitiveness with pretty.

But I have to admit, how the contacts have easy access to EVERYTHING associated with that contact is pretty badass.

seizurelitezrfun

@Macgyver: In what way is it worse?

diabolusunknownTheSecond

@Shawn Pero: Your speculation that it will be slow due to over-animation is equal to my speculation that it wont due to Android and Snapdragon.

Either one can occur.

"It already looks like it takes too long to get from one function to the next."

What video were you looking at? That was the smoothest thing ive seen in terms of a heavily eye-candy rich interface. Maybe your PC is shit and Youtube was stuttering because it was silk here.

And if you look at my previous comments, im no Android fan. This is a very nice looking interface in terms of how it uses the graphics to its advantage. Is it useful? Well, I haven't used the phone for a few days so I cant make any judgments.

diabolusunknownTheSecond

Wow. this looks pretty freaking amazing.

Dennis Chiuten

I actually like the interface, but I'm cautious about form over function and so far, this seems like it's just that.

...and FINALLY, the gawker network is using lightbox for image galleries! Please keep this up so we can stay in one page without spawning new ones, just to watch a freakin' pic.

jaredgibbs

All I want to know is what's the battery life?
What's the price?

@neild:

I'm sure it has some sort of smart dialer.

Its like an overly done flash website.

livinzlife

Biggest problem I see is readability.

@Jason Pope: Less restrictive, sure.
Every bit as good as Apple's?

I think not.

Macgyver

it reminds me a lot of the palm pre and the whole synergy thing.
i think if executed well, it would not only be a direct competetor, but also push android and sony ericsson further.

Wee, nice. Give me some.

@Shawn Pero:

Well for One it's OPTIMIZED Meaning it will work because the amount of ram and processing speed has been predetermined for working with the software.

gecko7jlk is enjoying the killzone 2 map pack

@AngelaSalamander:

Sony XMB Interface.

gecko7jlk is enjoying the killzone 2 map pack

@neild: Apart from that, if you notice, when the user is sending a text message, the keyboard obscures the most recent messages.

Jean Azzopardi

Woooww... what a beautiful cell phone... too bad any carrier wil subside it... This phone, according to the xperia xperience will cost about 800 green ones.... Darn... and wouldn't they make like a Rachel Mini version ??? peee leeeasseee???

Has everybodyelse seen the Tegra demo UI[1]? That blows like every UI I see these cell phone carriers coming up with away. Sure it could use some artstic polish, but if nVidia can put that together as a demo, why can't these manufacturer teams put something together that's even remotely as slick as that?

Well, I guess the fact that they're not actually gonna be running on a Tegra and won't have the power to do it would be a major problem. :\ Can't wait to see the first Tegra phone and what the manufacturer actually comes up with for it.

[1]

Drew Marsh

Hmm, I can only describe this with "OMFG I WANTS IT!". Always believed Sony Ericsson was the best cell phone manufacturer EVER, and there you go. The latest best OS I had seen was the the one for HTC Hero and SE has gone and made it even BETTER! I cannot wait to see what phone this is going into. SE for fuckin' ever! WOOT!

I would easily buy this!

Ariel Sergio Wollinger Martins

Agree. It even looks sluggish in a few places in this video. Besides, how can you say the words Sony and Interface in the same sentence and not laugh.

AngelaSalamander

Am I the only one thinking, meh? In actual practice, methinks this would be far less impressive, between the processor struggling to keep up with all those 3D goings-on, your crappy cellphone photos of your average-looking friends, and the iffy typography. I'm not sure why making things fly around in 3D is even desirable, given that it tends to make the UI more difficult to read and use. And everything other than the 3D photos looks pretty poorly thought-out.

Ikthog22

@mildretard: Make that three.

If VZW doesn't get a better phone soon, I will be heading to AT&T for an iPhone or Android phone sometime next year.

@neild: Yeah it reminds me a lot of the original, and second-generation, "Chocolate" phones from Verizon - the interfaces looked oh-so sleek (at the time, pre-iPhone) but in actual use all the visual fluff was just annoying after a week. The contacts looks incredibly annoying. The only upside to this interface is the smart merging of all communications with one person - I'd love to be able to flip from seeing text messages to emails. Otherwise, overly cluttered and lots of wasted space.

href="#c14116644">PyrateKitteh: Oh Please let US Cellular pick this up. I've been stuck with crappy phones for years and I will be stuck with them for years more because I'm on a group plan.

iPhone...still the best phone on the planet!!..Sad..but true..

feezy23

@beamin445: Yeah, cause that text is SOOO readable. Geez, how FUNctional. Too much attempt at virtual bling.

midiac

As long as you're not a big gamer, Android has a pretty comparable list of Apps next to the iPhone. It obviously doesn't have anywhere near as many overall, but the vast majority of things you can accomplish with iPhone apps can also be accomplished with Android apps (as well as some cool exclusive stuff, of course).

chefgon

It looks pretty, but doesn't look practical at all. Once you get used to the pretty effects it looks like the usability is going to suck.

brendan09

Does anyone know what UI, or OS the O2 phones use? I have a cocoon phone, and the interface has always been simple but really well thought out, with great options.

WOW! Very impressive. Wonder how it will work on an actual phone hardware.

@diabolusunknownTheSecond: Be reasonable, EVERY computing device gets slowdown, and with all the graphical hoo-hah in this phone it'd probably hit harder. It already looks like it takes too long to get from one function to the next.

Shawn Pero

I bet it's just a concept. The actual UI has to be faster. But as soon as the first pictures (and technical details) of this phone got revealed, I wanted it badly. I hope it's coming soon enough. If it gets at least 16 gigabytes of memory, I'm starting to save money :-)
(Oh, and I'm in Europe, which means I don't really have to worry about the carriers... :-) )

Gergely Kosztolányi

Seriousfuckingly Sony, add a fricken clip on PSP style controller and call it a day. With that screen and Tegra power it will beast! App store, shmapp store, a solid catalog of "real" 3D games is the only way to gain marketshare against the iphone. The PSP Go should have never been concieved of without phone functionality; make up for it with this baby!

Steven Johnson

Jesus, what apps do you have that you can't live without? We'd love to have you. :D

Makes me want to Barf

Chris Hendrick

Good bye iPhone ..... please release it soon

@jinushaun: Ah, the core foundation of all Sony crap. Drive up prices for the pretty looks but watered down specs and proprietary nonsense.

pressstart

@relawson: w810i is THE best dumbphone ever made.. hands down!

tsdexter

@relawson: I have one as well, and it really is a great little phone. I only regret getting one with the crappy Cingular nonsense on it. I may "upgrade" and get a newer standard version.

Kaiser-Machead

As a designer, I am a sucker for futuristic design. It might be extravagant, but it's still fairly simple to use.

bluerei

@babs1602: I would just like to ditto the above. So now that there are two of us, I'm sure Verizon will sit up and take notice.

Where's my apple touchpad paired with an iphone nano, already?? WHERE IS IT YOU BASTARDS!?

@Killjoy: WM holds it back since WM does not take advantage of the Snapdragons capabilities.

Android can since its open source.

diabolusunknownTheSecond

@Shawn Pero: Not with an optimized OS like Android and a Snapdragon processor.

diabolusunknownTheSecond

@Jason Pope: Much less restrictive. My friends G1 has apps I can only dream of having. (Commodore 64 emulator anyone)

in all likely hood xda will have a port of senseui ... so even if the UI is laggy there'll be an option thats lighter.

we need to know about the internal memory rom/ram hopefully 64gb/1gb but i doubt that ... does anyone know if the screen will be glass?

shadymilkman

It looks pretty, but the UI is needlessly bloated. The transitions and 3D effects introduce a lag factor that I wouldn't want to get used to.

The ability to have a contact's real time auxiliary information (e.g. email, facebook, twitter etc.) viewable on the contact card was my favorite part.

Catchy headline to generate clicks, but I don't think the writer genuinely meant it.

Shawn Leonard

@Kiamat: You can.

tande04

@PhineasJW: Almost is a stretch.

I love the look of this phone. Love the specs. Love the UI. But by the time it actually comes out its going to be outdated and obsolete, which is sad.

SE needs to get on the ball.

tande04

@tande04: Absolutely right. The original Xperia was almost obsolete by the time it finally appeared.

Add a bloody keyboard and all will be fine.

Ypoknons

will companies make quint-band phones that will have 1700 in them. i highly doubt tmo will pick this up. maybe i have to move over to att when this comes out. assuming it works there too.

sdsviet

No need for those windlike animations. That would get old really quick. Reminded me of the PDA's in video games 10 years ago.

"I like it enough to make me want to ditch my iPhone-if it had equivalent apps to the ones I use, that is."

Me, too, so long as it runs this smoothly on the phone. I wish Android was more like Linux where you can find the distro you like and install it on any computer with the right hardware. ie: It would be cool if you could run anybody's version of Android (HTC,SE,etc) on any phone that can support it.

Kiamat

replace stock photos with actual photos and you will be less enamored with that interface quick.

deliciousburglar

@PhineasJW: Which Sony has pretty much proven they're incapable of doing.

Remember the Xperia that was announced around the first iPhone? Or the Idou which was around the Pre but still hasn't seen the light of day.

tande04

Sony, add true turn-by-turn navigation and you have a deal with me.

F_munk

Keep in mind, this is potentially a 3.8" WVGA display running Snapdragon and Android. That alone makes it a *killer* handset.

I agree with some of the dissent on the UI. I think HTC's Sense UI is just as pretty, but much more functional.

But, if Sony gets this out the door before HTC can launch it's own widescreen, media processor Android handset...Sony's going to have a big winner.

@PyrateKitteh:

It dosnt seem like any high-end phone SE comes up with gets picked up by any US carrier. Sad.

Tony Bostony

@digidandy:

You do realize this is an Android phone which means we have our own marketplace and apps store which is every bit as good as Apples and less restrictive.

Jason Pope

This UI only works if you have good looking contacts. Everybody on this demo phone looks like a model from GQ or Vogue Magazine. Put my friends on there and you'll be looking to disable the "Giant Picture Card Overlay" mode.

I actually think it makes the contacts difficult to read and it seems like a waste of time to have the cards look like they float off in the breeze.

If Apple did this, everybody would be calling it eye candy and worthless.

donlphi

@beamin445: I think the UI is way too gaudy and over-animated - imagine what a pain it'll be when it gets sluggish and it starts chugging on animation when all you want to do is make a call.

Shawn Pero

There is something very... alpha in the UI. Reminds me Longhorn. Hope it gets better.

Deoki

Good BiPhone!

Jonathan Naundrup

All style, no substance. Lacks real-world usability, IMO. It's a pretty demo, but I can imagine a lot of the interaction design decisions and eye-candy will get VERY old after a while.

Confirmation of a Snapdragon processor will be confirmation that I should keep an eye on this. Until such time, has anyone has any real-world experience with Toshiba's TG01?

Just you wait till that thing gets squeezed inside a phone. It surely won't be as pretty.

Besides, ditch the iPhone? And the App Store?

I think not.

digidandy

@UndeadOverlord:

well it has twice the processing speed as the Hero so it should be pretty snappy.. hero runs a 528mzh processor this thing runs a 1gz snapdragon processor which i hear s down right amazing, in every aspect...

justinhub2003

While this interface does look fairly impressive, it's one of those showy demo interfaces that looks great and functional-if you have a total of 25 contacts. There is no way that I'm going to flick through 115 floating contact cards to call someone in my address book. It looks cool and flashy, but I think it's something that would be very annoying in real world use.

The on-screen keyboard doesn't seem as advanced as the iPhone's (who's keyboard I love).

neild

@PyrateKitteh: Yeah, word. Dont personally care for the interface myself but it seems like we already get reamed on the hot phone front over here.

They must be running this UI prototype off a quad core machine...If this has to be on a phone it better have some sweet hardware...

nikeplr

Thats one thing wrong with the iPhone. It's approach to customization is very limited. Also, with every other phone in the market syncing with popular social networks, you think Apple would let apps finally sync with its UI. How I long to sync facebook contacts, or have twitter updates with push. :( Now I'm stuck in a contract. Where is my Hero? (Pun intended)

I dunno this looks a little Too ambitious for me. Sure it looks great on an emulator, but all OS'es do. With an interface that busy when you start running apps and all its bound to slow down alot.
I want to see this run in an actual hands on hardware. I could be wrong. I hope I am. If it really is this fluid the Hero is gonna have some competition!

@Noobs-R-Us: I agree, I'm not sure it's better than the standard Android build either. It looks really nice but is that really how people want to read their messages? You can't see more than 3 or 4 at a time!

@burninator: lol hopefully the phones camera is up to the task

AznSlackerType~Is AbsurdlyNarcissistic

Ahnnn, I still like the iPhone's interface more. This one is too "fluffy".

Noobs-R-Us

I guess i need to get some classy headshots taken so i can give it out to people to use on their contacts page.

burninator

i would ditch the iphone RIGHT NOW if any US carrier picked this up and didnt screw around with the UI. wow.

beamin445

my SE w810i was awesome, I would totally rock another one with android on it! iWhat? nah, I upgraded!

relawson

This is exactly the type of phone (hardware and software) that Verizon needs to stop the smartphone bleeding. I'm not yet willing to move to AT$T but if they don't get something quick (and I'm not talking about the winmo omnia although the hardware is nice) I might jump ship for something like this. And yes I know these are not the right specs for Verizon and that this would not be coming but something like this is what they should be courting.

babs1602

It sure looks sweet, but I wouldn't hold my breath on a US carrier picking it up.

PyrateKitteh

Looks really nice, but using SE's Xperia1 I'm skeptical about SE and UI's. After all, this is pre-rendered in a certain sense.

It's a nice thought, but in the real world (by which I mean, for those who don't have a contact list full of professionally shot photos) would it be that nice?

Let's just hope a carrier in the US picks it up.

Pretty? Yes. Usable? I'm not so sure. It never ceases to amaze me how many iphony's go for pretty, shinny things. Were you a bass in a previous life Jesus?

whoster69