Off is on in Motorola world

I recently borrowed a motorola flip phone. The first non-Nokia I’ve ever used. I really liked it, once I’d worked out how to switch it on. How intuitive is it to switch the phone on using the red off button? How hard would it to have built the green button to have a call to action for on?

motorola red off / on button

4 Comments

  1. Hagen · Monday, 12 February, 2007

    Does your computer have two distinct on / off buttons?

    Matter of fact, a lot of phone do it this way, including the Nokia 2610. If you look closely, the red button is a power button symbol.

  2. felix · Tuesday, 13 February, 2007

    Unfortunately this is one of the minor usablility problems with that phone. I’m using a RAZR for one year now. I like the fact that it’s small and light. But the keyboard the obscure use of the keys on the outside of the phone and the terrible menu navigation make it a very unpleasant experience. You should just try to set the alarmclock. You can set a dozen of alarms, but if you want the damn thing to wake you up 6:30 in the morning, it’s only 20 keystrokes away plus it takes only 4 keystrokes to figure out whether an alarm is active a fifth one to see the actual time its set to and finally a sixth one to deactivate it inadvertantly…

  3. Mike · Sunday, 18 February, 2007

    Speaking of usability, did you somehow hijack the Alt-F functionality from the browser? When I try to access my Firefox file menu with Alt-F while on your site, a page comes up saying “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”

  4. Tom · Monday, 18 June, 2007

    Ever since I was quite young I’ve been used to switching on my phones via the red/power button. It’s only relatively recently that I’ve become more accustomed to using the green button, I don’t know if it’s a modern phones thing. I’m unsure as to which I prefer…

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