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Comment by j1elo | Hacker News Reader

I'm just reading from the barrier here, and not knowing what it even looks like, but reading your description I can immediately agree that it is a bad design.

There's only a handful of critical details in a call history, and absolutely no reason for any UI to implement them as secondary or tertiary details: Whether it was in- or outbound. To/from what contact. The date and time.

2 taps for some other extra info such as call length, or further contact details, would be OK I guess, but for first-level info as these, it's 100% bad design.

I mean come on, design-wise this was already a "Done" thing in the golden Nokia days! https://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/03/02/a-week-with-the-nokia-n...

[*] Ctrl+F to find the image below "miss a call".

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>not knowing what it even looks like

Clearly.

>There's only a handful of critical details in a call history

And they're all there: profile pic, contact name, indicators that show incoming/outgoing + missed/connected, which SIM, a redial button, how long ago (which after about a week shows the date), Tapping the middle expands the row (no obstructive pop-up) to show Block, Message, & Details buttons.

The reason it has 'human times' is because multiple calls with the same contact are grouped, so a precise time doesn't always make sense. Tapping the Details will show all calls in that group, whether it's one or seven, with their full dates, times, durations, and further options. It's never been a difficult UX.

> The reason it has 'human times' is because multiple calls with the same contact are grouped, so a precise time doesn't always make sense.

But a precise time does always make sense.

And even if "doesn't always make sense" was true, it doesn't on its own justify a different default.

So what does grouping have to do with it?

Multiple calls can't all have the same time and duration.

Thanks. There's no better way to check how it is than having it on hand.

I'd argue against relative dates because that's an opinionated design that requires cognitive overhead on the user. A young person might be able to mentally translate, but older ones tend to have it more difficult. Usually, opting for relative dates tells us about the designer's lack of experience with different groups of users than the normative one.

It wouldn't be a bad option to have. The calls app has only two display settings.

> design-wise this was already a "Done" thing in the golden Nokia days!

I might be mistaken but I seem to recall it being a done thing for android prior to several years ago when it was "improved" with an update. Although it's possible I'm confusing the call apps from AOSP and various vendors. Either way several of my past android devices had a significantly better address book, dialer, and call history.

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