Usability matters! It matters much more than features. A tangible example of this was presented by Scott Jensen at a keynote talk at MobileHCI ’10 in Lisbon, Portugal.
He compared the Nokia N95 with the Apple 2G, which were both top-notch devices in 2008. The Nokia N95 was a brilliant piece of technology that contained many features that got standard later in many other phones. The iPhone 2G was lacking many if these exciting technology, such as
3G
GPS
MMS
5-MP Camera
Video Telephony
Video Output on TV
…
As we all know, the iPhone became the probably most popular cell phone, at least in the US and in Europe. From my perspective, the iPhone was the first phone that actually made all the advanced technology usable while being on the move. If you’d like to experience what I mean, try to enter a URL with a num pad keyboard.
