There's a raging battle in the user interface design arena. At the extremes it's a battle between 'flat' design at one end and 'skeuomorphic' design at the other. Sacha Greif has written a very nice piece on the subject. It's a long read, but it's bursting with great information and well reasoned thoughts.
Hat tip to Shawn Blanc
Every design is arrived at through a series of design choices. A designer must determine the qualities most fundamental to the product, and then drive the design to that end. Contrary to what Microsoft would have you believe, every design choice has consequences.
On Saturday, I wrote that the new iPhone was an evolution of the original phone, but better in every way. I've been using the iPhone 5 for four days now, and that time has been sufficient to allow a thought to crystalize. I now feel that in use, there is one glaring aspect of the phone that hasn't improved, literally since the day the first iPhone was released.
Since the iPhone introduction, the screen, camera, processing power, storage, operating system, design, apps, data speeds, integration with OS X, sync, backup, build materials, size, weight and thickness have all improved. The missing piece in this list is the battery, and it's absence is glaring. I've never used an iPhone without the battery percentage meter turned on so I can anticipate when I'll be able to top off.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that battery life is worse now than it was when the iPhone was introduced. It's not. It's amazing what Apple has been able to do on the power management front to squeeze every bit of juice out of the battery they use. The iPhone 5, if anything, gets slightly better battery life than my 4S. It's truly remarkable.
I think Apple has chosen the wrong focus in their design of the iPhone. They've been focused on thickness with each iteration, and now with the iPhone 5, weight. Those things are good, and I appreciate them, but their focus should more properly be on battery. Allow me my thoughts.
When the iPad was introduced, it was a revelation. It opened peoples eyes to a reality they had never fully considered to be possible. A computing device that you could really use, all day, without even carrying a power supply. Nobody could believe a device that size, which was almost all screen, could run that long without needing a charge. But it did. And the world has never been the same. That battery life, along with the instant on capability and the comfortable form factor, changed the future of computing. When people choose to use the iPad as a replacement for their laptop, battery life virtually always tops their list of reasons why.
With the iPad, maintaining battery life was deemed by Apple to be so fundamental to the product, that they did something completely unheard of for an Apple product when they released the new iPad. They increased the thickness and weight to maintain that life.
It makes me wonder if the iPad and iPhone teams ever talk.
I've never heard a single complaint from users or the press that iPad battery life is not sufficient. On my own iPads, I've never felt the need to turn the battery percentage meter on to monitor remaining battery. I simply use the device during the day, as I see fit, and then throw it on the charger at night. I wake up the next day and repeat. It's an indescribable feeling of liberation to have a high tech device that frees the user from all concerns about power usage. Steve Jobs often talked about the magic of the device, to the aggravation of some. He often said he wasn't sure exactly what it was that led to that feeling. I'm convinced the battery is one of the central causes.
The iPhone does more than ever with the battery it has. But as the screen resolution doubled, the maximum storage increased by a factor of eight, RAM increased by eight times, megapixels increased by four times, thickness decreased by 30% and weight decreased by 17%, a fact remains. An active user still has to think about battery during the day. It shouldn't be this way.
As I wrote earlier, I've used the iPhone 5 for a few days now. I love everything about the new design. I love how thin the phone feels in my hand and how light it is. But with absolute certainty, I'd trade those two qualities for battery life I don't have to think about. I can't help but wish Apple had made design choices with the iPhone more in line with the iPad.
If instead of being thinner and lighter, Apple had maintained the thickness and weight of the device at 4S levels by adding battery, they'd have a better phone for this user. I long for the day when I can treat my iPhone like my iPad and turn the battery monitor off. It would be liberating to just use the phone and then plug it in before bed. It would perhaps make the iPhone magical like it's bigger iOS sibling.
**This story typed almost entirely on site of the 2012 Ryder Cup on my iPhone 5, plugged in periodically to a PowerFilm Solar USB+AA to make it through the day.