The iPhone Beats HTC Touch and Nokia N95 at Usability Test

Rather than competing against one another, based on suppositions, the three main mobile phones have responded to Perceptive Sciences' initiative of putting their capabilities to the test. Results showed the iPhone way better than the HTC Touch which dropped to second place and the Nokia N95 came third.

Perceptive Sciences, a Texas-based usability consulting firm, focused especially on how easy it is for people to use the functions of the three devices without having tried them before. Ten such testers have been asked to perform a series of tasks on each device, such as the time needed to find and use the on/off switch. Aside from this, they have also been asked to set the phone to vibrate, make a call, save a phone number to the contact list, send a brief e-mail, take a photo and find a Web site using the device's built-in browser.

Each of the three phones received a score between one and five (five being the highest) in each of the five categories. The overall result has been calculated based on these ones. In terms of usability, iPhone proved to lead at a great distance from its two competitors. Its overall score in the usability tests was 4.6 out of 5. The HTC Touch scored 3.4, while the Nokia N95 only 3.2.

"Testers were [typically] about twice as fast doing specific tasks on the iPhone, which is pretty remarkable", said Thornton senior research scientist at Perceptive Sciences. The purpose of the research was a simple one. "People can eventually learn to use any device. But that's not true usability. We wanted to see how long it took to figure out how to use the phones. That's the difference between learnability and usability", mentioned research scientist Tim Ballew.

Apple's phone proved to be a true leader when compared to HTC Touch and Nokia N95, the two main "iPhone killers". Still, this is only a usability test and not a functionality one. Its purpose was not that of testing the handsets' performances, but just how easy it is for first time users to work their way around to complete some basic functions. It looks like the iPhone's interface is the best of those tested and even surpasses the TouchFLO one. HTC might be proud of it and plans on using it in as many smartphones as possible, but this research should trigger a signal for them to bring some improvements to it in the future.