iPhone vs. Voyager

DJ-S1DJ-S1 Registered Users Posts: 2,303 Major grins
edited December 8, 2007 in The Big Picture
CNET hosts the steel cage death match...guess who wins?

Comments

  • SheafSheaf Registered Users, SmugMug Product Team Posts: 775 SmugMug Employee
    edited December 6, 2007
    DJ-S1 wrote:
    CNET hosts the steel cage death match...guess who wins?

    Interesting. I haven't used a Voyager, but I was a bit surprised that they had it ahead in navigation with its clunky menu. My favorite part of the iPhone is the interface and navigation. It's absolutely incredible how easy it is to do stuff. The judges seemed to put a heavy emphasis on texting.

    Oh and Bonnie is crazy. A tie on "video and music quality" even after admitting that the Voyager has super choppy video and hollow-sounding music?
    SmugMug Product Manager
  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited December 7, 2007
    CNET is totally worthless. The staff reviews are terrible (they pick pet features and make those the most important) and often biased towards companies that advertise with them.

    And have you ever watched a "first look" video? Biggest waste of 120 seconds.

    Even the user reviews on CNET are generally terrible. (User reviews on Amazon.com are usually much, much better.)
  • DJ-S1DJ-S1 Registered Users Posts: 2,303 Major grins
    edited December 7, 2007
    Pupator wrote:
    CNET is totally worthless.
    I disagree, I use their reviews all the time as a first pass. Sure they pick "pet features" that they put emphasis on, doesn't everyone? How else would you rate a product?

    If you just look at the "score", then I agree it's not worth much. I read the actual review and decide if the features they are talking about are important to me - I don't care much what the score is.
    sheaf wrote:
    The judges seemed to put a heavy emphasis on texting.
    Yep, like Pupator said they pick pet features - obviously having the full keypad is a help in that regard. I don't think you will find many who would rank Voyager (or anything else) above iPhone.
  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited December 7, 2007
    DJ-S1 wrote:
    I disagree, I use their reviews all the time as a first pass. Sure they pick "pet features" that they put emphasis on, doesn't everyone? How else would you rate a product?

    I'd rate it on it's ability to perform all of the features expected of a device in it's category; not just the one I cared about the most.
    If you just look at the "score", then I agree it's not worth much. I read the actual review and decide if the features they are talking about are important to me - I don't care much what the score is.

    If the scores have no meaning, that's one sign of a useless review.
    Yep, like Pupator said they pick pet features - obviously having the full keypad is a help in that regard. I don't think you will find many who would rank Voyager (or anything else) above iPhone.

    So then the review isn't very good, right? If 9/10 people would rank the iPhone higher, and the 1/10 ranks it lower because they over-emphasize a pet feature - that makes a lousy review, right?

    Just asking headscratch.gif

    EDIT: I read it again, every word, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. It's actually worse than I first remembered. The groups comments on the navagation section alone indicate they have something against the iPhone (and you can search around, I'm sure no Apple fanboy!). Their comments in the "Features" section are just laughable. The LG Voyager "blows out the iPhone" says Nicole for music and video support (iPhone can't be touched here), GPS, EVDO (even trade for Wifi, I think), and Stereo Bluetooth (Apple goofed on that one!), and "access to streaming video and over the air music downloads." Uh, hmm - how is it I'm watching all those YouTube videos on my iPhone? Oh, and the iTunes music store, man do I wish it was on the iPhone...oh wait. Worthless.
  • wholenewlightwholenewlight Registered Users Posts: 1,529 Major grins
    edited December 7, 2007
    I'd love the iPhone or the Voyager - But I just need one that pays attention to Exchange servers.

    Neither of these are good for me unless they they can do 'Push" email broadcasts. Unless something has changed about the iPhone, it doesn't. It seems a no-brainer for these companies. Grab the attention of corporate users and you can sell a lot more phones.

    So, I'll stay with my BBerry 8700. My company, Brocade, keeps threatening to toss out the BBerry server but it hasn't happened yet.
    john w
    http://cspics.smugmug.com/

    I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.
    Edward Steichen

  • DJ-S1DJ-S1 Registered Users Posts: 2,303 Major grins
    edited December 8, 2007
    Pupator wrote:
    I'd rate it on it's ability to perform all of the features expected of a device in it's category; not just the one I cared about the most.
    Really? I don't think giving every feature equal weight makes sense in a review of a product. Some features are simply more important than others, no matter what the product in question. The fact that a reviewer picks features that they feel are the most important is a problem only if they emphasize features that aren't important to the reader.
    Pupator wrote:
    If the scores have no meaning, that's one sign of a useless review.
    It's the discussion that I am interested in, what tests they ran, etc. Sorry, I just don't care what the number they come up with is. I don't think " well, if they give it anything over a 7.2 then I'll buy it." I use the review as a piece of data among several that help me make a decision.
    Pupator wrote:
    So then the review isn't very good, right? If 9/10 people would rank the iPhone higher, and the 1/10 ranks it lower because they over-emphasize a pet feature - that makes a lousy review, right?

    Just asking headscratch.gif
    If you say so. I guess there's no room for a dissenting opinion? 9 out of 10 reviewers would say that BMW builds phenominal cars, but one may mention that the iDrive (or whatever they call it) controls are awful and downgrade the BMW rating because of it. Does that mean the reviewer did a lousy job?
    Pupator wrote:
    EDIT: I read it again, every word, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. It's actually worse than I first remembered. The groups comments on the navagation section alone indicate they have something against the iPhone (and you can search around, I'm sure no Apple fanboy!). Their comments in the "Features" section are just laughable. The LG Voyager "blows out the iPhone" says Nicole for music and video support (iPhone can't be touched here), GPS, EVDO (even trade for Wifi, I think), and Stereo Bluetooth (Apple goofed on that one!), and "access to streaming video and over the air music downloads." Uh, hmm - how is it I'm watching all those YouTube videos on my iPhone? Oh, and the iTunes music store, man do I wish it was on the iPhone...oh wait. Worthless.
    I never accused you of being a fanboy. I read your thread on Vista all the time, it's been helpful to me.

    On the other hand, you clearly love your iPhone and IMO are overreacting to a perceived slight by these reviewers. I wasn't trolling here, just posting an article I thought was interesting. I purposely don't post articles that I think will get this kind of reaction (like the one I read today on Wired that claims Leopard is to Tiger what Vista is to XP). I just don't care to get into that kind of useless "discussion".

    Moving on now...
  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited December 8, 2007
    DJ-S1 wrote:
    On the other hand, you clearly love your iPhone and IMO are overreacting to a perceived slight by these reviewers. I wasn't trolling here, just posting an article I thought was interesting.

    I would never accuse you of trolling - you're way too informed and helpful for that.

    I actually wasn't over-reacting to the iPhone review, I was "over-reacting" to CNET reviews in general. I was being honest when I said that I never find them helpful. I didn't want an iPhone, I wasn't planning on being impressed by the iPhone, but it won me over. I've had to eat crow on other forums where I said it wasn't all that impressive (before I owned one). But really, everything else aside, I hate CNET reviews. The quality of review I find on Brighthand.com or even dpreview FAR exceeds CNET quality. That's all I was trying to say - sorry if I said it too strongly.
  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited December 8, 2007
    wholenewlight wrote:
    I'd love the iPhone or the Voyager - But I just need one that pays attention to Exchange servers.

    Neither of these are good for me unless they they can do 'Push" email broadcasts.

    iPhone does push only with Yahoo! e-mail. So I get my personal e-mail "pushed" (I switched from gmail to Yahoo for it), and I just have to live with every 15 minutes on my work e-mail.
  • wholenewlightwholenewlight Registered Users Posts: 1,529 Major grins
    edited December 8, 2007
    Pupator wrote:
    iPhone does push only with Yahoo! e-mail. So I get my personal e-mail "pushed" (I switched from gmail to Yahoo for it), and I just have to live with every 15 minutes on my work e-mail.

    Yeah, I need a connection to my corporate exchange server - I know some people who set up auto forwarding to their yahoo email - works until you try to reply.
    john w
    http://cspics.smugmug.com/

    I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.
    Edward Steichen

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