Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

Only 1 day with the N9 so far; a few issues:

Yes, it's very hard to get the keyboard opened when you hit the text entry box. Same goes for emoticon-button once you're in the text box.

I cannot use my existing chat accounts (except google, which I only have 7 contacts on) with the N9 as they're all jabber based. Defeats the point of a communications device. :)

I'm confused by the way the Google account details are (not) displayed in the contacts view. Opening a contact that also is a google contact of mine will include the Google-section with the ability to initiate a call or chat. I have not figured out any way, though, to actually see either the exact handle for this contact nor his/her online status on Google. When I choose to edit the contact, the input field for the Google account is empty as if there wasn't any. A contact's online status is given as an indicator in the avatar only. Once there is a Jabber-plugin and I'd see contacts appear on multiple networks - will I be able to tell apart which network exactly they're using at the moment?

What I really, really miss is an easy way to tell at a glance who of my favorite contacts is online right now (or what their status messages are). This is done in the Home screen on earlier Maemo tablets or on the N900. I could sort the contacts application accordingly, but even then I couldn't filter for favorites. Also, I'd have to bring up the application only to have a brief look. - I don't know how one could work around this in the restricted "no-desktop-view" UI concept of the N9; maybe a solution would be to push status changes of favorite contacts to the "events" screen.

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

When I was involved, we tried to run this through UX people and number of complicated corner cases that they found during the session made clear that there are more issues than solutions for general public on this way, without achieving substantial improvement on usability. So this was rejected afterwards as not being simple for laymen. Probably will resurrect in next incarnations of Swipe UI, who knows...

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

Anyone knows how to show birthdays on calendar. I think it was on beta1, but it seems to be missing on final version.

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

It's quite interesting to see two people mentioning the "hard to hit" UI elements... I have big fingers and so far no issues, but your messages show that there might indeed be an issue.

Not displaying the google address on the chat button is... Again a design decision :-/ A workaround is to go to the "unmerge" view, there you should see the IDs. The rational was that you usually identify people by their name, not their google id :-p If you have a contact with multiple accounts, you will see the "global" presence on the avatar, and the individual presences on the chat buttons. The input field for google is empty to allow you add a new one... I'm not totally satisfied either with not having the accounts in the editor. Note that if you have a contact with two GTalk accounts, then you'll see the IDs on the buttons.

Not having widgets indeed severely limits the "check quickly who's online" usecase, I think that when you order your contact list by "availability" the favourites are still on top of the list? One possible replacement would be to "zoom" the app switcher screen to 2x2 (instead of 3x3 view), and leave the contacts app running there.

(ab)using the event view might be another option, I don't know how the API to interact with it looks like.

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

The birthday implementation in beta1 was incomplete and had performance issues. The birthday feature is hopefully coming back in 1.2, at worst 1.3. The code is ready, and now works for all your contacts, except facebook (due to legal restrictions).

Note that since contactsd is open source, you could also checkout the code (see link [1]) in my original code, the birthday plugin is already packaged separately. So it'd just be a matter of installing the package on a 1.0 device (untested, might kill kittens).

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

My observation is that it's hard to hit because the touch-sensitive area doesn't match the visible area. If I hit the input field exactly, nothing happens. I have to place my finger so that it's slightly outside the input field. I have to make sure I touch the line between the input field itself and the area above. Of course, finding the right position here is difficult.

It may actually help to have big fingers. - I noticed I did better when pressing my thumb flat on the screen rather than using the tip of my index finger, as i usually would. (Although when doing this, there's always a chance the touch gets interpreted as "slide-up", moving the whole application window.)


I have this feeling that without all these "design decisions", it could have been an even better device :p

The rationale that you "identify people by their name" could be used to hide away phone numbers and mail accounts... :) - The point of the contacts view is to see which contact detail is stored for a certain person. Google accounts are contact details just as phone numbers are. Also, as merging happened automatically, I would have appreciated a quick and easy way to check. - I'm not really complaining though. Just wondering...

Anyway. The bright side is: As long as I can't use my Jabber-based accounts any more, these issues don't affect me too much. Maybe that was the rationale behind leaving Jabber out *LOL*

(I use the N900 and a C7, and I really appreciate that overall the N9 inherited the way contacts/IM integrate with the system from the N900 as opposed to the C7. The points I don't really appreciate so far - the "design decisions" - are minor nuisances that probably disappear with hopefully a Jabber-plugin and some practice on my side :) ...)

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

Hmm, so that looks like bad touchscreen calibration... Not sure what you can do about that :-/ In any case, the actual touch area of the text field could be bigger than the entry itself (since the area behind is "dead", ie clicking it does nothing), but I'm not sure the framework allows that. As mentioned in a previous reply, I'll bring up the issue on monday with the competent people to see if we can do something (or if something was done for 1.1 or a later release).

The "misinterpreted" swipes should get better in 1.1. I use my device with my thumbs (chimpanzee mode :-) ), so can't comment here.

Well yes there are many UI decisions with which I disagree too... But don't worry, windows phone is coming to fix all that :-p ! </sarcastic mode>

Note that you can already "use" your jabber account by following the instructions in http://wiki.meego.com/Migrating_from..._account_setup (just replace the gtalk settings by your jabber settings).

What will work: contacts will appear in your contact list, you'll see the presence/receive messages etc.
What will not work: there will be no chat button in the contact card (implementation detail, because the the account in only in telepathy, not in the accounts framework and contacts app uses the latter). To initiate a chat, go to Messages app, click on the "start chat" button in lower right corner, and pick your contact.

This is far from ideal, but can be a temporary work around until someone publishes an account plugin for jabber.

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

I first thought that would be it, as some UI elements in the lower area of the screen had a similar issues. But then, most applications (most notably the keyboard) work fine and detect touches without any problems, so... I really don’t know.

Certainly. Maybe in 2020, when (if ever) Windows Phone reaches the level of current smartphones, I'll be willing to try. ;)


Ah. That's interesting. Thank you for this helpful link! I'm not sure I'll do it here and now on a brand new device (that I wouldn't know how to re-flash if I break it), but if time passes without a proper plug-in in sight, I'll know what to do. The restrictions you mentioned I could live with.


A very different issue:

In the accounts setup, I don't find a way to change username/password for existing accounts. (Google, flickr, SIP, mail accounts, all the same) I'm not gonna try now, but what will happen if I change the password for an account on the server? Will I have to delete and re-create the whole account or will the N9 ask again once a login fails?

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

I have heard this also from some of my friends who have N9.

Generally speaking it is quite strange that some of the UI elements are sooo tiny. When I tried the pre installed drive application, it was quite nice that it had these larger buttons to hit, it was much easier to use.

Re: N9/N950 Contacts/IM - Get help & give feedback here
 

Hi abustany, thanks a lot for the great work and more for your time to be here.

I use mfe and works exchange server. All work (I mean things get synchronised two ways) but I have some trouble finding out which field in Outlook corresponds in N9(50).

Is there a document/list describing which fields from an N9 contact match in the outlook contact?