T-Mobile UK launches innovative new interface by Qix on N70s

Link: CanadaIT.com – Company News

Zi Corporation, a leading provider of intelligent interface solutions for mobile devices, today announced the deployment of QixTM by T-Mobile on 25,000 Nokia N70 mobile phones.

The service will be available on other phone models through the course of 2007. T-Mobile is initially offering Qix in the UK, and the global agreement with Zi Corporation provides for additional rollouts in other countries covered by T-Mobile.

Qix is an innovative technology that enables rapid discovery of contacts, features, services, and other content on mobile handsets. Zi worked closely with T-Mobile to create a customised Qix experience.

All the phones in this rollout include content links (QixLinks), which will allow T-Mobile customers to quickly access their preferred content on T-Zones.

This caught my attention as T-Mobile have, in my experience, rarely done a lot of branding to their handsets. Yes they’ll custom design the odd screen interface, but that’s usually it.

Adding Qix could be a rather valuable addition. From what I can see from the screenshots and text on the Zi Qix site, it looks like a wickedly useful application.

One of the BEST features of Windows Mobile for Smartphone is the ability to simply start typing a name from the standby screen, e.g. spelling ‘Ewan’, you’d hit 3, then hit 9… and by this point, the smartphone OS has already popped into your address book and is displaying every possible ‘Ew’ or ‘Dy’ (or whatever combination) address entry. So you can get to an address entry usually within 3 clicks directly from your standby screen. No need to click on address book.

Well Qix takes that brilliant interface element and multiplies its usefulness by about 500%:

Qix provides a quick and easy method for accessing a phone’s full set of features, applications and services without having to remember where and how to find them via a phone’s built-in menu structure.

I like……

Qix analyzes key presses and computes all possible combinations of the letters and numbers represented by those keys. Qix then indexes these combinations and presents the results on the screen. The more key presses, the more refined the results. Over time, Qix’s interactive memory begins to remember new user data, including new URL bookmarks and called numbers for future presentation. In addition, Qix tracks frequently used personal selections over time and begins to present them with priority over other information, providing even easier access to favorite items of the user.

Now, this is the sort of interface enhancement that has been lacking for ages. I’m confident enough, from just seeing the screenshots, to assert that if you put this Qix interface in the hands of your average 25 year old girl non-tech non-geek, she would ‘get it’ within 10 seconds and never look back. I wonder if it could become so intuitive that it could sway a purchase decision? When you sit back and recognise the absolute arse that is navigating around your handset, the reality becomes clear.

Sod having to screw around with menu structures. It doesn’t matter how efficiently designed the brain surgeons of the mobile manufacturers are, I’d sooner not have to arse around hunting for the camera menu when I can just type ‘ca’ and click enter.

The T-Mobile branded Qix is only available on 25,000 N70s at the moment — that should hopefully expand out to other ranges. I wonder if I can download it to my unbranded N93 or E61? We shall see.