The Motorola F3 mobile phone. Is it close to perfection as a pure phone ?

Well, almost.

If you want bells ands whistles, cameras and web access, look away now.

For people wanting a mobile phone (cellular phone), then the F3, is getting very close to perfection.

The positives.

It is small, light weight and compact.
It is light, low drain, the battery lasts a good week or more,
I have tested it more than twenty miles off shore with excellent reception and also in desolate hilly areas, where it compared very well with other cellular phones. So as an emergency or back up phone, it works superbly well for such a minimalist design.

The F3 is almost perfect for everyone who needs a simple design for occasional use, with large, clear lettering and numbers and a easy to use key pad. If the elderly or non users can be encouraged to use such phones, then they too will gradually start using them more often and this is what the name of the cell phone game is all about. The rest of the market is saturated, and its getting cheap simple phones for the rest of the market to use is where the F3 can be important. Cheap, effective and incredibly slim and light weight, with a clear screen and easy keypad.

Whoever designed this phone did a very good engineering job, and only failed in minor areas, mainly software and ergonomics, probably by having to direct it towards a market which was poorly focused. Most likely managerial or focus group problems.
Nevertheless, such a fine device has excellent potential, simply because the fundamentals areas designed so well.

The negatives.
In the age of the iPhone, the F3 is only a phone, so many people will not like it.
Or to be more blunt, many people will not consider it a fashion accessory to bolster a pale image of themselves. Others may simply desire the latest high tech for a lust for technology.
But for those wanting just a phone, then the F3 does the job incredibly well.

The instruction booklet is noting short of appalling, and badly printed. This may be a cheap phone, but even a half decent instruction sheet, clearly printed and legible is the minimum that Motorola should be able to produce. I know of school kids who can do far better, and in the various languages offered.

The F3 phone, from switching on power, will not access the address book, a glaring problem, where only brackets move across the screen. It should come up with almost instant address book. - As a phone, it should act like one.

It is obvious that this phone does not use a raster mapped screen, and thereby has incredibly low power consumption. But the alphanumeric segments can be optimised a little more and made a little more friendly and although the segmented LCD display has obvious limitations, which cannot be argued against, the designers could at least make the segments a little bolder.

The keyboard can be much better.
As a tactile design, the present pad is excellent for moderately nimble fingers. But the visual design is poor. With simple redesign, it can be much more friendly to use in its customers response. As all designers know, its the first reaction which sells any design - there is initial confirmation or gradual dislike of a design.
As many visually impaired or tactile limited persons want a bright, bold keypad, then this is the killer application of any phone design, and must be maximised to thereby sell millions of these easily affordable devices to the elderly population.
We all know the young population of phone users is saturated and it's only fancy new toys which now sell phones, especially when the internet shad such like simply cannot be fitted into a phone, not even the iPhone is truly acceptable, although they getting better. But for the rest of the world, then a simple, clean, incredibly easy cellular phone is desperately needed.
The F3 has all the parts in place, but looks bad and is not very tactile - it just needs minor redesigning to gain this market.
The underlying functional design is standard pads, with just an upper membrane, so tooling would be minimal, for a vast selection of key pad styles. I have made my own using acetate covers to test the various possibilities and they are simple to make and offer a far greater set of options to sell to the public. My present keypad is a standard membrane, printed in black lettering on white background with a large, rounded, clear bubble over each number.

An main advantage of the basic design is the ability to fit a variety of front membranes. We all know that buttons have become so small as to be close to impossible to use for half the population - those with large fingers, poor eyesight and poor tactile abilities. We all know Nokia have skins and such facile rubbish for the less intelligent or fashion conscious, but being able to actually change something of genuine consequence makes the F3 a giant step ahead of the competition. The interface between man and machine - the keypad - is always the weak point and the F3 can overcome the limitations and offer a wide variety of options. So can the F3 offer a selection of key pads from which the customer can chose. How any times is a customer seen checking the tactile aspect of a phone, to the point where sales may well depend upon the ability for the buttons to be pressed easily - this happens all to often and the F3 can and should be many steps of the competition.
It does not take a genius to realise that the large clean expanse of the F3 keyboard area is a perfect clean slate to get the various solutions perfect. To be able to make clear, easy to use buttons rather than the recessed areas of the present design.
The delineating silicone strips make the keypad of the F3 excellent to use for normal people but for older people then this is all to often not the case, even though it works better then many phones, but can be better. Such a keypad does not always seem to work well, and believing the appropriate key is pressed is far more important than just assuming it: The user may try to press a non tactile button many times just to make sure and this just gets into a right mess.
Therefore, simple, clear buttons, with plenty of space between them makes for a perfect design.
The buttons could be illuminated, or bright, with just the numbers marked on them. The letters of the alphabet printed beside or above the keys for easy texting.
The four way disc is perfectly good, although the dimples could be larger and a millimetre more towards the edges for easier tactile recognition and use.

The colour of the phone, being predominately black is a major problem for most users and is probably why it never sold in great numbers. I have modified mine to use white, or pastel colours, and this makes the phone much easier to find, to read and to use.
So the F3 desperately needs a few new front membranes and a better colour than black.

With a new front face, the phone can be used to great advantage. Technically, as this phone is wonderfully slim and the battery lasts forever if switched off, then as an emergency backup, it is almost perfect.
It is perfect for ordinary people who just want to use phones as phones.

It is a moderately cheap phone to make, and as such has low profit margins. - But by using the same production tooling, with just the front keypad layer modified, different colours and a few software tweaks, it can make excellent profits by being the first and best mobile phone designed specifically for those wanting just a convenient occasional phone and the more elderly person.

(In the same way the Nintendo Wii took old technology and remarketed a fairly basic concept, so can the F3 be an evolutionary step. Eventually the next generations of battery technology, low power screens and advanced non-tactile phone interactions become available in about five years. But until battery technology can offer the endurance of the F3 with a raster screen, then the F3 is king of this particular hill.)
Like Honda in the 70's; they knew the real market. The F3 marketing must also be different - in the appropriate magazines, not just sat beside the other high tech phones in countless fancy but uninspiring phone shops. Advertise the low power consumption, ease of use and such like, where the market ads can be direct sale in a wider potential customer area. Offer it in three front pad styles at first to gauge market trends.

The F3 - the right size. The right shape. Superb battery life. A clear screen.
The right basis for a perfect, basic phone for all to use easily with truly minimal hassle. - As such it can mop up the lingering edges of the mobile phone world.
Not everyone has nibble fingers, sharp short range eyesight or an inclination to remember lots of fancy menus.

For the many millions who don't have a phone because they are too fiddly to use, too many menus or too heavy or need charging every other day, or simply a hassle to use, to big, too fiddly, too complicated, too expensive, or simply too much ! - Then a mildly modified F3 is close to being the perfect phone.

I am a designer and engineer and can see beyond the limitations of the F3 to the possibilities of this superb, minimalist design.
Even with a technology degree and a science degree, and one of the first in my city with a computer, I was never impressed with modern telephony, and only the F3 ticked my boxes !

If Motorola are reading this, please allow me to redesign the F3 model for all, especially the elderly, and make a few minor changes to the software to make it as perfect as is humanly possible.
I offer my redesigns for free and only charge my usual half of one percent of clear profits if any such design reaches production.

John Partridge. B.Ed. B.Sc. M.I.Plant Eng.

Email me at jhpart at btinterenet.com

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