What would you like to see in a future HP Prime II? (HP Prime², HP Prime 2X)

[jonmoore]

(05-03-2021 06:39 AM)OlidaBel Wrote:  Concerning the hardware :
1- the next gen Prime should/must have a clear and readable keyboard, with high contrast colour scheme.
The current one is a pain to use, a pain to read.
Follow the example of the HP 32SII.

2- a better screen angle of vision

Agree fully with most of this but I'm probably swayed by my years of 50g use, and would say this is my favourite HP calculator hardware UI from the modern era that integrates CAS capabilities. I own a 32SII too and think the interaction design is spot on but it features a far more simplistic feature-set and on that basis benefits from a far more direct interaction model with minimal menu diving (for all the 35s's faults, its update to the 32SII hardware UI is reasonably successful).

The Prime is one of my least favourite hardware designs from a UX perspective. The combination of the mirrored backplate surface with alpha characters that disappear at certain viewing angles due to backplate reflections and an inappropriate slanted key design, that means the LCD legibility is badly obscured due to it's poor viewing angle performance (to view the alpha characters well, you often need to be looking at the slanted surface face on). The particular shade of orange used for the alpha characters doesn't help matters either.

The HP Prime may look pretty in photographs, but its real-world hardware interaction performance has too many shortfalls.

On the plus side, the keyboard action is one HP's better efforts in the modern era (although not quite as good as the 50g's, which is probably as good as it is, to make up for the travesty of the 49g+ another metal effect monster!).