A small gripe with an otherwise perfect machine:

Is there any convention in the software to
disable or 'lock' the contrast wheel? If
not, is that something that could be built into
future OS versions?

I seem to have developed the nasty habit of
frequently nudging contrast by accident, when
handling Pronto.

I wonder why they didn't use software contrast
control rather than the wheel, I find the
wheel not recessed enough, even two tiny
push buttons would be better I think. Maybe
that will be addressed in future 'redesigns'
of Pronto.

Herr Schultz, Herr Helpful?

Thx for any insight!

I like the idea of software controlled contrast!

I'd ideally like to see 2 contrast controls, one
for when the backlight is on, one for when its off; for me the best contrast level is different for the two.

I currently have to stick it somewhere between, which is not the optimum for either.

i agree with your assesment of the contrast wheel in that it might have been better if it were hard push buttons.
although i think the reason phillips made it a hard button was conveniece and frequency of use.
on a personal basis, i use the contrast wheel quite a bit depending upon the lighting situation.
i know that it would be more cumbersome to access the setup menu(i would assume thats where the contrast would be if it were in fact software based) every time i wanted to change the contrast.

since there is a light level sensor on the pronto, if the contrast were software based, perhaps the contrast could be light sensative and auto-adjusting with adjustable user-definable parameters.

just a thought

Yeah, I guess i can understand the ease/frequency
of use argument. Me personally, there's a tiny
range where it is perfect, dark or light, so
if it wasn't for me errantly moving it and
readjusting, i wouldn't be fooling with it too
much.

Even a wheel with the little 'snap-stops' in it's
motion would be good....could take a finger brushing over it w/o turning.

I find I use the contrast dial more than one would initially imagine. The Pronto seems to "warm up" - when I first turn it on after a day of no use, the screen's really weak, so I turn it up with the wheel. About 15 minutes later I notice that everything's way to dark; there's no grays... so I turn it down to "perfect". The next day, it's too weak... etc. That weel's sorta handy. :-)

Maybe so, that's what i thought initially,
until I looked at how I was grabbing it, etc.
It's very easy to accidently turn the wheel
without even realizing, just setting it down for example, and then as a result having to readjust
contrast before re-use.

Because like you i wasn't sure whether it was
screen output variations, I put a little clear tape over the wheel and ran it like that for
a few days, and the result was no discernable
contrast variations (that you couldn't attribute
to room lighting).

Oh well, I got very little to complain about
with the Pronto anyways. Maybe it has more to
do with my 'Bratwurst' style fingers than
Philips choice of controls.

If the contrast control were software based this would create some forseeable problems. If the contrast setting was turned down extremely low, then some people would complain that once the setting was turned down that low they could no longer see the screen to readjust the contrast back up! A response of "what about adjusting the contrast of everything else on the screen except the contrast control?" is an impossibile request. The nature of LCD hardware and the way in which the contrast is controlled makes creating this type of interface nearly impossible or ridiculously costly at best.

A wheel provides the quickest form of contrast adjustment and greatest degree of sensitivity. I have used hard button contrast controls and I have two complaints about them:

1. In order for you to get a feel for how much you can increase/decrease the contrast from the current setting, a bar of some sort is required. Even the fastest responding contrast controls of this type are, in my opinion, too slow for a handheld display device. Most PalmPilot and Windows CE handheld devices use wheels for this very reason.

2. Wheels give a greater "feeling" of contrast sensitivity as opposed to hard buttons. Some people would undoubtedly complain that the various levels offered by button control are not in small enough increments.

Just my $.02

Jeff: No need for that to happen... Don't put the contrast control in a menu... Since I haven't used a pronto before, I'm not sure of the button setup, but perhaps you could hold down the backlight while pressing the channel up/down or volume up/down to adjust the contrast. My HP calculator does it this way, you hold down the On button, and press +/-.

All great comments to do with the contrast control. I beleive the primary reason was ease of operation (thumb wheel). I would also suspect that at this point, changing it to software would be a little more difficult. Consider that the thumbwheel would have to stay else new plastics would be required at $$ cost. I suspect that it may be revisited sometime in the future if the market demands it. Then implemented in a future product update.

Maybe just recessing the contrast control a little further would be the best solution here.

Going to a software-controlled contrast control is:
a) more expensive
b) much coarser control (i.e. it would be stepped, and as I'm sure you've found, the ideal setting is always between two steps :-)

A software-based contrast control is only usable when there is already sufficient contrast for the display to be visible. Consequently there needs to be some minimum contrast guarenteed by the hardware, probably as an internal factory adjustment. The software-based control ends up just being a 'fine-tune' for contrast.