More pixels = better
I have spent the last five years not texting. My friends thought it was funny that although I was sophisticated enough to program computers, I was not sophisticated enough to send text messges. It’s true – I was really bad at T9, the “smart” auto-completion engine available on phones without keyboards. It took me at least twice as long to initiate a conversation using T9 than it took to call some one and either have the conversation, or leave them a voicemail. I’ve seen people that can mash out messages in T9 faster than I can type, so I know it’s possible, but I could never go more than a word without having it change what I wanted to say into something completely silly.
So I guess I should have gotten a phone with a keyboard. But honestly, until the iPhone came out, I felt that doing anything on a phone except talking was kind of a joke. I like to think my aversion to T9, and early “smart phones” in general was less a matter of ineptitude and more a matter of disgust with the user experience. It all just looked/worked so badly that I wanted nothing to do with it.
I recall the potential for handheld devices dawning on me the first time I saw a webpage display on a first generation iPod touch. The screen was twice as large and had more resolution than anything I had ever seen. There was meaningful and visible detail so small that it would have fit inside of one pixel on a normal phone. The zoom and scroll interactions were completely novel and did not seem like poorly scaled computer screen conventions.
On the iPhone 4, the screen resolution is the single greatest improvement over its predecessors. The pixels are so small you can’t see them, just like … real life I suppose. Some would pick the Facetime functionality as the best feature, but since I don’t use it much I’m going to focus on the various technological and design-related triumphs that give the iPhone 4 a powerful aesthetic.
The incredible screen resolution provides a startling level of realism to the interface. Anti-aliasing on the curves is imperceptible and perfectly smooth, while surfaces and edges convincingly express reflection and depth. The iPhone proves that subtly is a partner to good design. The gradients used for shine do not span a large color range and are defined and terminated by clean lines that signify a convincing separation of surface in the least amount of pixels possible.
But why do these things matter? Interfaces are metaphors representing outcomes. The metaphor must be decoded in order to achieve the a desired outcome. Lots of things can make this difficult, but giving a digital interface physical properties like reflection, depth and texture makes it easier and more pleasurable for people to decipher the metaphor. Good interfaces ape reality by creating an illusion; the reality is that digital devices are complex, non-mystical things that transfer information through electricity, the illusion is that pushing a button makes something happen.