i am talking about howardforums.com which is one the best forums for s60 phones and people there are really demanding . i dont consider them 'few anonymous member here and there' . at least two well known members have given their actual usage experience.
what is the reliable source ? gsmarena.com ? mobile-review.com ? no thanks i'd rather take words of a reliable forum member. for example , if you look at the review of 5800's camera sample they are almost identical to n78 but in real world 5800 performs much worse and every forum complains about it while most review gave it a 'ok'. remember how samsung i450 got reve reviews for sound quality yet cant even deliver enough volume for most user ?
completely agree . but i am yet to see a negative comment about n86/97. btw , i own a 5800 so i know the pain of having a 19k phone that feels like rs900 phone.built and feel and looks are areas samsung does real great job.
i closely follow many s60 forums and i haven't seen many disappointed users . in most 'i hate n97 ' threads people complain about n97 not having better hardware or 12mp cam or uber features , but except for 'keylock' bug , i dont hear much complain about performence of the device (not counting peoples general bashing over s60's dated ui).
btw , n97 already had an update which have solved keylock bug , improved browser further and increased the free ram and overall made device faster. i bet n97 will recieve like 10xmore software update than omnia. i dont feel confident with samsung who never delivered any update to even innov8.
Dude this is the thing i am talking about. Even the so called well known members are not under any oath to give 100% (heck even half of it) unbiased reviews.
Take for example this forum TD. Has a quite a fair number of fanboys. There is one particular member. He is quite well known and but the thing is he hates nokia from head to tail. A totally new guy visits here and he read posts from this well known member bashing a nokia device even when the mobile doesn't even deserve a quarter of the bashing. Now is it the smart thing to read it and think that is one universal truth ? Even though the member is well known but he still protected under the internet.
When i visited sf for info on N97, a few owners were complaining that it had poor build quality. Did i stop there for my quest for info and go around other forums posting that N97 has sucky buid quality just from reading from a few members. Nope i did the smart thing and visited various well known mobile sites etc. and read, watched etc. I collected info and summarized that even though N97 has other problems, it generally has a very good build quality.
On the other hand well known sites like gsmarena etc. reviews are more reliable. Ofcourse no one is a saint and there will some amount of bias, but still more reliable. These sites generate revenue through the traffic,ads etc. Now if it starts posting extremely biased reviews it will only alienate itself. Take for example esato forum. Its an se forum, so u will have a tough time finding an unbiased nokia mobile review from members.
Fanboyism, even previous bad experiences and various other influences can warp ur thoughts.
Ofcourse the few members from howardforums might had gotten a few bad devices, the same which happened to the few members in SF. But that doesn't mean entire Omnia hd's and N97's are bad.That's like calling the entire mankind murderers just beacuse of a few. These are few isolated cases and it happens to almost any device. A few errors do occur during assembly. And if it really has questionable build quality like the 5800, then it will be posted in various mobile sites.
Probably one of the best methods is to not stop at just one source, visit various sites and collect info and summarize the facts from it.
Reminds me of the frog in the well which thought that the well was the entire world. One has to go out to realise how vast it is.
As for n97 complaints start at sf but also use google. The are different types of bugs like memory leaks, widget ui crashing, phone hanging etc. Omnia hd is no exception here either and has almost the same type of bugs. But these are all isolated incidents and can be mostly fixed.
You have a cheap looking 5800...........hmmm i have a N82 with cheap looking keypad. So i can understand ur pain
but seriously looks wasn't the only main criteria was it
See the thing is most people don't know what are all the alternatives. They stick with a well know brand to avoid taking risks even when the said product is not the best available or overpriced.
Take for example the Pentium 4 and Athlon processors. Most people bought the P4 and were satisfied with it. Most didn't know about athlons. The people who knew still most didn't take the risk.
Here in india for most computer=intel
I went to my computer dealer a few months back, to buy a few hardware. When i asked him about amd processors, he started singing the usual song u hear from most. But one part "Amd processors expires after 3 years" i couldn't stop my laughter when i heard that
The same thing is happening with N97. Most didn't want to venture in new territory and rather get "used" to the scroll bar, double/single click etc. Frankly most people get adjusted and force themselves to feel satisfied with it. After all if u start hating a device from day one for minor issues then u will soon feel u just flushed money down the toilet
With phone like innov8, samsung tried to show the world that they can bring advanced tech much before others. Its fandom was increasing.
Finally now with Omnia hd and its various other devices, it has a large user base and the increasing market share.
Now this caused phones like Omnia hd to become extremely popular and many started buying it. Now when the user base was growing rapidly, the usual samsung pathetic software support couldn't be kept under wraps for too long. The poor sound recording news spread like wildfire and was posted in various mobile sites and forums. It was heavily criticised, emails were sent, samsung forums were bombarded with complaints.
Finally samsung acknowledged it and announced firmware updates coming to fix audio and further improve performance.
The omnia hd is under heavy scanner. Samsung will provide updates, cause the last thing they want now is to be stereotyped infront of whole world as providing lousy software support.
Ofcourse nokia will have 10x or even 20x times more updates. But i would rather use a device which is mostly bug free at retail and 5 or 6 more updates to fix the remaining minor bugs than a device which is very buggy and has 30 or 40 updates. Thats me.
Just think for example an average guy bought the device who has no clue what hacking,firmware updates etc. are, he will probably know mostly the basic stuff. He will be disappointed with it not knowing how to fix it and learn to live with the bugs or take it to service center and endure its associated headaches.
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