One of the things that has bothered me about the iPhone 3G is that the 3G reception at my house cannibalizes the telephone signal. A call works when I first connect but shortly cuts out with a “Call Failed” error on the screen. For whatever reason, this only happens in a few spots around town and my house happens to be one of them. Because of this I find myself switching the 3G radio on and off a lot. I also switch the WiFi on and off while I’m around town because WiFi is constantly searching for a signal which is a battery drain. If I know I’m not going to need it then I switch it off to help me conserve a little battery life and to avoid the WiFi-connect “nag” screen when I’m trying to read a document.
It turns out this is simply a pain. None of the switches for the radios are in the same place, hierarchically speaking. The Airplane Mode is a switch that turns off all radios and is located in the first level of the Settings application. The WiFi switch is located on the 2nd-level under the Wi-Fi menu. And the 3G radio is located on the 3rd level under the General > Network menus. The only one that is really easy to get to is the one I use the least which is Airplane Mode.
I believe there is a rather elegant solution already in use on the iPhone that could be applied to help ease this pain.
When you’re typing in an email address or URL on the iPhone and it properly detects the field, the keyboard switches to help make typing that format easier. At the bottom of the virtual keypad is a dot (.) key to help expedite typing the dot in .com or other domain extension. But if you tap that key and hold for a second, a sub menu pops up with some of the more popular domain extensions such as .com, .net and .org.
People either know about this or they don’t. If they don’t know, there’s nothing about it to get in their way. They go about their business. But if they do know about it then it helps save a little time finishing email addresses and URLs. This same user interface could be applied to the top bar of the iPhone screen with the same kind of results. If you know about it then it’s useful but if you don’t it doesn’t get in your way. The only thing the top bar is currently used for is clicking to bring you back to the top of any page whether it’s a web page or an email message. But the only clickable area is the area between the radio-signal label and the system icons and time. By making the radio signal button a clickable area the iPhone UI designers could add a sub menu with the different kinds of radio options and allow you to make a quick choice.
The one issue with doing it this way is with the nature of how the iPhone works. Apple clearly wanted to make this as user-friendly as possible so they created a way to have the iPhone automatically detect, and switch to, the appropriate network radio. This worked well when it was just Edge and WiFi but when 3G was introduced this became more of a hassle than it was worth. The problem is that 3G has to shut down and the phone has to find the Edge signal in order to make the switch. So when I’m on a call at my house and I forget to turn off the 3G radio, the phone ultimately drops the call because it can’t switch from 3G to Edge midstream. In order to use the system I’m proposing there would have to be a new preference menu under the Settings application that would allow you to toggle whether or not you wanted the iPhone to automatically detect the appropriate radio or if you would like to do it manually. If you choose the manual option then the iPhone no longer attempts to connect to any network unless you specifically ask it to. The default state of the iPhone in manual mode would be Edge. And you would have to use the sub menu navigation to switch to 3G, WiFi, or Airplane Mode. If you want to turn those off you simply choose the E for Edge and all other options are disabled. This would help with making the quick switch from radio to radio and also help conserve battery life since the other radios are being turned off.
I believe in making a user interface that is easy for the most basic user. But you should also enable ways to allow more advanced users to customize the experience to their liking. It’s a delicate balance but can certainly be achieved.