The questionnaire mostly proposed closed options, so I wish to add some open suggestions.
Product Design
The product should be as complete as possible, which means:
- the product plan should value functionality and should avoid alienating potential customers (some will not buy a product without the 4+1 hardware buttons, some will not buy a product without the SD-Card etc.), so it should be as complete possible in hardware features. This does not apply to the technically difficult (e.g. frontlight on big screens) or on the trade-offs (e.g. battery vs weight), but does stronly apply on the basic features (buttons, SD-Card, light-reflex-free frame, audio jack etc.)
Quality assurance
The product should be as complete as possible, which means:
- solid hardware: trying to prevent that faults are detected at a later stage (e.g. non-durable components);
- solid Onyx software applications: the applications you provide should be reliable;
- featureful, full Operating System: the features that users may use and are expected from the Operating System should be working (for example, Android includes USB networking, lock/encryption, screen mirroring - but they were found disabled in the Onyx firmware);
- solid software experience: the device should work well with as many software applications as possible. The firmware should be tested against a large number of software applications to improve the user experience with them. You will want to assess why some will not work as well as expected, or why some will not display as they should. You could patch such faults with per-application features such as “disable animations”, or “use alternative theme/styles”, or “double contrast”, or “alternative dithering” etc.*
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(Note on these latter examples to be less obscure
- “disable animations”: Android developers tend to place animations - views that slide, shrink etc. - where they are utterly unneeded, and they make a mess on EPD;
- “use alternative theme/styles”: some applications appear with, for example, white text on white background preferences or menus. Maybe the main theme/style could be improved, but providing alternatives per-application (if it looks bad, try changing the style by picking from these alternatives) will probably fix the vast majority of cases;
- “double contrast”: especially with regards to web content, some is published for example as “light grey on very light grey”, which breaks your eyes on EPD. All browsers are fixed by a per-application “double contrast” option;
- “alternative dithering”: if you are watching video (or viewing a remote desktop etc.) you want to use A2 with a dithering algorithm that switches dots as little as possible (Floyd-Steinberg is no good for animation: it changes pixels continuously in pseudo-random places); if you are looking at pictures, you may want to use Floyd-Steinberg but in Greyscale Update mode, etc.
This is just a list of things that come to mind - not scientific, not exhaustive.)
The fact that the firmware is significantly less capible than the ASOP reference firmware is a huge disappointment. It took
engineering effort to disable lock/encryption, USB networking, USB/bluetooth keyboards, etc.
the fact that this only has 2.4G wifi, no 5G wifi in a device that costs $800 is extremely disappointing
the lack of accessories (things like folio cases) from any source is annoying.
the reason I purchased this max2 is that it’s the only device on the market with the large screen, if you want to call that “leading
edge product design” you can try. But other than offering the large scree, there’s nothing else leading edge about it.
Thank you for addressing the lack of Lock/Encryption ability that is standard in Android operating systems. I think they really went out of their way to cripple the operating system and YET advertise it as a plus. Android 6.0 can LOCK and ENCRYPT Natively so why they would disable those functions is beyond me. It screams to an ubiquitous corporate world, please don’t buy my device.