That “minus” to Windows Mobile is offset by how easy it is to “do it yourself” – with any c# background, it was easy to write my own contact search/dialer. BUT that should not be required in well designed UI , especially not for such basic usability scenarios.

On a side note, one issue that I encountered while making that small contact program could maybe explain your 30sec searches of only few thousands contacts – since my initial solution had slow search for only 400 contacts.

It turns out that it is not search algorithm that is problem, but very slow response time for Windows Mobile API call to retrieve single contact info. Just by initially loading all those contacts in local program memory made searches instant, even using dumb search algorithm (at a price of initial 20sec load of all contacts).

That "minus" to Windows Mobile is offset by how easy it is to "do it yourself" – with any c# background, it was easy to write my own contact search/dialer. BUT that should not be required in well designed UI , especially not for such basic usability scenarios.

On a side note, one issue that I encountered while making that small contact program could maybe explain your 30sec searches of only few thousands contacts – since my initial solution had slow search for only 400 contacts.

It turns out that it is not search algorithm that is problem, but very slow response time for Windows Mobile API call to retrieve single contact info. Just by initially loading all those contacts in local program memory made searches instant, even using dumb search algorithm (at a price of initial 20sec load of all contacts).

Have you read about Google's OS for mobile devices (a.k.a. Android) much?

At one software company I worked at, I was told that "usability doesn't sell software" and that our CEO didn't "believe in usability." It may well be true that usability doesn't generate sales. When I worked for "big consulting co," we would evaluate software based upon a prioritized list of client-required features. I can't recall that "easy to use" was ever one of them. On the other hand, the software CEO worried a lot about adoption and penetration into our customers' organizations. I suspect that usability would have a big impact on that.

Every engineer who designs anything to be used by another human being should be forced to read (at a bare minimum) Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" (see http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Dona…