When I was in high school, I infuriated my maths teacher because I always wanted to know why something was done that particular way or why that particular rule was used. There was never time to discuss why. My hunger for knowing why never abated.

Today I had my Mobile Mentor session. It wasn’t as useful as I thought it would be. Firstly, I have had the Desire for almost three weeks and therefore have figured out more than the basics that the service is meant to provide. Secondly, because I had taken a back-to-basics approach, I have essentially been using the Desire exactly how I was using my Nokia and couldn’t think of things I wanted to achieve with the phone. Thirdly, some of the things I wanted to know, such as how to check how much credit I have left, he couldn’t answer (in that case because they obviously aren’t trained in prepaid, even though all the reviewers were given prepaid credit). Fourthly, I was guided through a couple of things (eg creating bookmark shortcuts) quickly, but only once, so there was no way to recap and now I don’t remember how to do it. Fifthly, all of my why questions went unanswered.

I am going to list some of these questions here.

Why do I keep getting the force close message up to four or five times a day?
Why can you remove some apps and not others?
Why can’t you manage the music files the way you manage the apps?
Why can’t you delete music files without connecting the phone to the computer?
Why do you need to download an app that allows you to manage files in order to do basic things without mounting the Desire as a drive?
Why doesn’t the usb port fit the standard small usb that my Nokia and three cameras all fit?

To me, design-wise, these things don’t make sense. Inconsistencies and non-standard methods of doing things seem to be the norm for the Desire, when all that does is cause confusion and foster frustration in non-geek users. It’s as though the designers haven’t fully committed to anything. “We’ll let you think you can manage files but not actually let you do it all within the device,” it says. Well I want to know what is the point. Either you can or you can’t. This in-betweening is totally nonsensical.

I snicker every time I hear the term “Sense UI” because, frankly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.