Full keyboard, touch panel wanted by most who try
Advertisement
With many mobile phones both here in Japan and abroad sprouting touch panels and full keyboards, this recent survey by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone input facilities revealed a few interesting statistics about them.
Demographics
Between the 12th and 17th of February 2009 1,074 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 15.5% in their teens, 17.9% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.6% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.4% in their sixties.
The survey also investigated voice input, but it is just the simple pattern matching for speed dial, I believe, a feature standard on many phones. I believe the next big feature for Japanese phones will be the dictation of email messages, but I also believe it won’t work very well and will not find any significant mainstream use.
If I had the money, I’d really love to upgrade to the Sharp S004, featuring all three of the features asked about here, a full keyboard, a touch panel, and an accelerometer.
Research results
First, 114 people, or 10.6%, had used a mobile phone with a touch panel, either finger or stylus-driven. They were asked the following question.
Q1: After trying it out, how useful did you feel a touch panel on a mobile phone was? (Sample size=114)
Totally useful 15.8% Useful 56.1% Useless 13.2% Totally useless 3.5% Can’t say either way 11.4% Next, 110 people, or 10.2%, had used a mobile phone with a full keyboard. They were asked the following question.
Q2: After trying it out, how useful did you feel a full keyboard on a mobile phone was? (Sample size=110)
Totally useful 20.9% Useful 47.3% Useless 10.9% Totally useless 1.8% Can’t say either way 19.1% Next, 90 people, or 8.4%, had used a mobile phone with voice input. 24.4% found it useless, and 6.7% totally useless.
Next, the complete sample of 1,074 were asked about whether each feature was necessary. The implication seems to be whether it is a necessary of the next phone one purchases, and the most desired feature was touch panels, with 4.5% stating it was a necessary feature, and 54.3% saying it would be useful to have.
Finally, the least popular feature was as follows:
Q3: Do you think an accelerometer is necessary on a mobile phone? (Sample size=1,074)
Necessary 1.3% Useful to have 21.0% Useless 55.8% Can’t say either way 21.9%
Subscribe to feed
It’s odd there aren’t many voice-to-text phone utilities in Japan. There are quite a few for various Blackberry models, but they’re all in eigo. (Most cell companies that sell BBs in the US omit Asian languages from their OS, which can be upgraded periodically. It’s kind of a pain if you’d like to do emails to non-English speaking friends in Japan. Supposedly you can use an Asian vendor’s OS version as long as it’s for the same model you have, but there’s still a good chance of bricking your BB anyway.)
As for me, I wish one of the Japanese network providers would use GSM – most of the Japanese phones kick serious butt, but won’t work in the US. Shoganai, ne?