wants your help with the development of the next xel

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 17 Feb 2017

’re still months away from the unveiling of the xel 2, but is already working on deciding which features to add to the highly anticipated follow-up to its first officially bred phone. And it wants your help.

No, hasn’t launched a Kickstarter page, but it is seeking input from users on what they like about the xel what they want to see improved. In a post on the xel User Community board titled “Chamfers, cross-hatch patterns deep blue – obsessing on xel’s design,” Krishna Kumar, product lead for the xel, posed four questions to forum members: “at do you like about the design? at do you hate about it? at did we get right? at would you like to see us improve?”

Kumar’s post highlights the difficult decisions made with xel, “from the design team endlessly obsessing over the angle of the phone’s edges its feel in h, to the texture of the power key, to color selection cheeky names – some of the choices trade-offs that went behind the xel design!” That “exhilarating”  “terrifying“ process was recently outlined in a CNet article that took a deep look at the various design, engineering, color choices that went into creating the xel.

Asking an online community for help is always a risky proposition—just take a look at the ZTE Hawkeye—but there are some definite trends emerging in the comments that could very well influence ‘s decisions when designing the next xel. The most requested featured seems to be smaller bezels, something that upcoming flagships from Samsung are already adopting. Additionally, many users want to see waterproofing, more storage, stereo front-facing speakers.

Too many cooks: ile it’s certainly interesting to see what xel users like dislike about their phones, has to be careful about taking too many of these suggestions to heart. at makes the xel so great is its simplicity. There isn’t anything particularly revolutionary about the phone, but it gets the important things right, most notably the Android experience. If gets caught up in a feature race tries to check off too many boxes, it risks compromising the xel’s main advantage. But as long as is taking suggestions, here’s one: Exp it to more carriers make it easier to purchase.