Mode Errors in Mobile Phones
A recent post on the humanized weblog has got me thinking about mode errors in software I use often.
One particularly nasty one occurs on my Nokia 2100 phone when sending SMS messages. After selecting “send”, a box is displayed to enter the destination number. To select a contact from your address book, you press button A. However, if a number is already present in the entry box (if you are replying to a message, and in other circumstances whose criteria I am uncertain of), the same button A sends the message!
The implication? My reflex action is to press button A immediately after selecting “send” to go to my address book. Twice in the past two days there has already (unexpectedly!) been a number there, causing me to send a message to the wrong person.
What potentially embarrassing or disastrous mode errors do you deal with regularly?
December 23, 2006 at 12:00 AM
Well, my 6230 has something even more annoying: a default number for sending SMSes. I have no idea how this was set, or if it’s possible to change it, but it has resulted in me sending more than a few messages to a random number (not in my phone book, so I have no idea who they are). I haven’t mustered the courage to ring it and find out who it is…