Browsing Verizon’s list of supported cell phones, I was struck by their obvious lack of needs-based segmentation. Like most carriers, they seem to be preoccupied with the market for feature-packed Swiss Army knife style phones-cum-camera-cum keyboard. Voice quality seems to be an after-thought…

I’ve been looking for two years for a simple phone that makes no compromises when it comes to voice clarity or audibility (or ease of dialing). To no avail.

When you read their customers’ reviews of the current generation of mobile phones, you can’t help but notice that there’s a community of frustrated Verizon subscribers out there who just want a simple phone that delivers on the basics really well:

• Long battery life
• Clear voice quality — no muffled audio, no “hollow tin can” voices, no clarity problems caused by the carrier’s over use of compression — delivers a great audio experience for both caller and the person called — natural sounding voice
• Easy-to-use buttons when dialing numbers, even for people with “normal” size fingers
• Won’t turn on, dial randomly or “speed dial” when dropped into a purse or backpack
• Visible caller ID so you know who’s calling you
• Simple but elegant — no unnecessary frills that consume battery life or add ounces to the carrying weight

This is a phone optimized for the human voice — not for texting or replacing your camera or camcorder.

As more and more people ditch their landlines, I’m sure there will be increasing demand for such a phone — at least among Baby Boomers who still value spoken conversations and person-to-person dialogue. What it truly means to be “social.”

And no — we don’t need a 911 panic button right in the middle of the screen or keypad. (Verizon’s previous keep-it-simple phone was obviously aimed at technophobe seniors.) I bought one for my husband — but he made me return it as soon as he saw the 911 button. He was embarrassed to be seen at work carrying a phone clearly designed for senior citizens.

Yes, I use (and love) an iPhone for work. It’s usually good enough for making or receiving calls, but can be disappointing when it comes to audibility. The speaker is still too quiet at times (even with the new iPhone 3Gs).

Placing calls with an iPhone can be a hassle for those times when you just want to make a quick call, and you don’t want to mess around with Apple’s UI to search for your contact. Or you’re out in broad daylight and can’t see the on-screen keypad. (Or you’re a scofflaw and want to dial the phone while stopped at a red light.) And you haven’t yet read the manual to learn how to program your phone for voice-activated dialing.

Or like me, your family uses Verizon so you want to make and receive personal calls on the same network your family uses.

My Motorola Razr is wearing out. Over time the keypad buttons get sticky (I’m now on the second phone — same problem). These sticky keys cause repeated misdials. Sadly, there’s nothing in Verizon’s line-up that motivates me to replace it (or re-up for another two years).

I just hope that one of these days Verizon will delight me (and people like me) with a phone optimized for the human voice. And ease of dialing.

First off, Google for iPhone excels at speed and efficiency, and the app shows how much this matters in pulling a user in.

It Takes More Than Raw Network Speed

In my opinion the overall usability of the browsing experience makes all the difference in the world when it comes to mobile device adoption for online browsing. My prior experience with speed sans usability was not compelling.

Arguably, my Treo 700p, running at EV-DO speeds on Verizon’s network, should have offered a faster browsing experience than Apple’s iPhone on AT&T’s slow-paced EDGE network.

The “Whole Ecosystem” Has to be Optimized

But the reality is, the speed that the user actually experiences has a great deal to do with how the whole browsing environment has been optimized for the particular mobile device.

Optimization has to occur within the client-side device (in this case, the iPhone), the mobile-optimized browser (Apple’s Safari), the web pages (Google’s), and the web application architecture. If there’s a glitch anywhere in that ecosystem, the user’s experience will be compromised.

In the Treo+Verizon case, there is hardly any optimization at any point in the ecosystem. I eventually gave up trying to get real-time traffic updates for Seattle, because I’d be well past the traffic jam before my Treo had even displayed the local traffic site. (The local site, run by a state government agency, doesn’t attempt to optimize for WAP interfaces. Therefore the Treo is generally unable render the traffic web page in any useful form.)

In contrast the iPhone affords a totally different mobile browsing and searching experience, for traffic reports and weather — and now Google services. Many web sites work very well on the iPhone — without any extra effort on the part of the website owner.

I think Apple’s reliance upon an optimized version of Safari plus the Web 2.0 architecture — over time — will prove to be a winning strategy, as others in the mobile services ecosystem race to catch to the standard of excellence that Google and Apple have demonstrated with the iPhone. This will set a whole new level of user expectations.

As the Mobile Insider concludes:

Now obviously, an iPhone Web app works at an unfair advantage when compared to most handset interfaces. The touch screen, screen real estate, and simple mechanics of the Web 2.0 … interface make it easier to design speed and simplicity into this format than the more challenging handset.

…But the fact of the matter is that Google’s iPhone app reeled me in.

Take a look at these daisy-chained adapters!

To connect the old-but-still great Grado Labs (or Sennheiser) headphones to an iPhone requires 2 adapters. One handles the interface from the large plugs designed for a traditional component stereo system to the smaller size used with portable music players like iPods. The second adapter provides the extra-long jack that the iPhone requires.

This photo tells the story. Ugly, but it works — and the music sounds just great!

I love my iPhone not just because it’s an object of beauty in its own right, but because the experience of using it is so pleasurable, so much of the time.

It feels great in my hand: the curved shape, the weight balance, and the tactile feel of the materials. I smile at the way it sounds when someone calls me or an alert chimes to remind me of an upcoming meeting.

The user interface for voice calls has been thoughtfully designed, so when I’m on a call and a new one comes in, the UI offers sensible options for how to handle those calls. I don’t have to remember any silly key combination in order to juggle multiple calls.

The hi-res display is fabulous, and I love the way images are rendered, whether mine or those provided by Apple. Everything about the product says its quality is more than skin deep.

A Model for Others?

Experts in interaction design and brand experience undoubtedly look at the iPhone launch as a case study in how to convey brand attributes throughout every aspect of a product, its marketing and the consumer’s usage experience.

Speaking for myself… My experience of activating the phone and porting my mobile number from one carrier to another was simple and flawless. The self-service online approach was fast, easy to understand and visually elegant: everything that Apple has “trained” me to expect as a customer over 20+ years.

The user interaction model had Apple’s fingermarks all over it. Although I hear the behind-the-scenes carrier work was messy, the way Apple and AT&T managed the self-service activation process should be an inspiration for other technology-based consumer services.

Part of the magic of the iPhone comes from the way Apple has managed the brand experience at all the consumer touchpoints, from point of sale through activation to usage and maintenance. (Not to mention the way they whipped the early adopter and analyst community into a frenzy during the long wait for the device to arrive in the stores.)

iPhone versus Treo

Before buying an iPhone, I was a frustrated Treo user (after a long love affair with earlier Palm OS devices).

In my first 90 days as an iPhone user, Apple has already updated the iPhone 3 times, with noticeable improvements each time. This compares to the 2 years I had to wait before Palm, Access and Verizon fixed the bugs in the Treo 700p that caused it to crash all the time. The firmware updating process is simple, if you’re used to using an iPod; and requires much less effort from the user than the equivalent process on the Treo.

Compared to the Treo’s limited capabilities for email handling and web browsing, I’ll put up with EDGE in order to have an email environment that’s actually useful. Messages are clear, well presented and nicely formatted. And you can actually use the web browser!

Synching an iPhone works just fine, especially compared to what I experienced using Verizon Wireless, a Treo 700p, and a POP email account with 500+ contact records. I must have done a dozen hard resets on the Treo in order to fix the duplicates and triplicates caused by the poor quality synching utility that Verizon delivers to its customers. To make matters worse, those problems would work their way back into my Outlook file if I made the mistake of synching the Treo to the PC without checking to see if Verizon’s service had introduced duplicates again.

So far (first 90 days) I’ve had no problems synching the iPhone to a PC — and I’m using Plaxo to synchronize Outlook 2007 calendars, contacts and to-do’s across two PCs. It all works like a charm, and I don’t have to waste my time maintaining what’s on my phone.

It just works — and provides pleasure during its various interactions with me.