A timely reminder from Scottish Games Developers Black Company Studios about how important the UI is on both a mobile device and in applications . It's an area that is getting more and more attention in the mobile market, partly because with the hardware specs of mobile phones becoming similar by the day, how people interact is becoming a major selling point.

One of the things I do nowadays when I pick up a phone for review is count icons. The last year has seen this count hit roughly 60 applications in a new Symbian device. This, to my mind, is a ridiculous number for a new user - while there are a large number of people that demand that sort of oomph from their phones, it doesn't need to be on display from the first switch on.

But even if there are usability studies that show all these apps are needed (can't we have a 'do you the full suite or the ten most popular' in the introduction tutorial?) the whole UI in most Symbian OS smartphones is a mess. It takes too many taps/clicks/cursor moves to get to msot functions, and while you can add 6 icons to the standby screen in S60, try explaining how to do that to a new user - and even when you get to the right dialog it's not even sorted in alphabetical order; it wouldn't surprise me if the l33t hax0rs in Finland are sorting on the UID of the application.

So where now? Apple have raised the UI as a selling product, and the rest of the smartphone world are playing catch-up. Is it time to start again with a clean sheet of paper, or are S60 and UIQ up to the job required in the 21st Century?