The phone in question is a Nokia 6160. It has a standard telephone number pad. An assortment of other labeled buttons handles various functions. The display screen shows five lines of information.
User interfaces are hopelessly bad on many electronic devices, and on some non-electronic ones, too.
But progress is in the wind, and the Nokia helps explain why. When you look at some software and hardware, you get the distinct impression that its designers were trying to impress engineers and techno-enthusiasts, not regular folks. This worked well in the early days of the computer industry, as a similar method worked well in the early days of the automobile, when customers had to be their own mechanics. Personal computers are now in about half the nation's households, but I cannot believe the penetration will get a lot higher, at least not with the kludgy, unreliable devices we've been using for the past 20 years. Yes, they've improved in function and speed, but the real leap into ubiquitous computing will happen when we enter a new age, the era of connected information appliances.