Research mobile phones
I've been researching mobile phones today as my phone has been playing up this week. In fact it's been playing up for the past two months but it's been especially bad this week. I know I'm still within my contract (and there's probably very little I can do about it) despite the fact that I specifically asked the sales person if the phone was reliable when he called me to offer me an upgrade.
Well, I phoned tech support twice this week (I left it this long because I'd read lots of reviews that said that the model I have had this problem) and the second agent did advise me that it was a known issue and referred me to the manufacturer when I asked how long it had been known. I phoned them and they stated that there was no known issue with the phone.
Anyway, today I decided that the best thing I could do would be to research the market so that, whether I stay with my current operator or not, I had a good idea of whether what phone I wanted to upgrade to.
I started with my own operator's site and, for every phone that was available on contract, I checked the phone against a mobile phone review site I know. If the phone wasn't there then I plugged the search key:
"phone model" review uk
into Google.
I tend to skim over 5 star reviews as there's only so much "this phone is da best" I can take. ;-) I'm interested in knowing what's wrong with the phone and, more importantly, is it reliable or not. I tend to favour reviews that are longer, have useful information in them and are written by people who have had the phone for a while[1]: i.e. "this phone is poor. do not buy" would be ignored but "This phone needs recharging every day, the screen can only be seen in the dark and half the time it hangs on booting up." would get my attention. Also reviews which, in addition, show both sides of the coin -- i.e. the good and the bad would get even more attention from me.
If a 5 star review looked well thought out then I might read it. If it had the words "reliable" and/or "robust"[2] would get my attention even more. Yes, I love all the features but reliability is one of the most important features to me followed narrowly by robustness.
In the course of my research today I came across a theory postulated by a reviewer. This theory was that some phones are unreliable because mobile operators add their own software to the phone. She postulated that the phones without the operators software are a lot more stable. I don't know if that is true or not but it's an interesting theory.
[1] Most phones take weeks before they break down.
[2] Phones do get dropped despite the best care you give it.
Well, I phoned tech support twice this week (I left it this long because I'd read lots of reviews that said that the model I have had this problem) and the second agent did advise me that it was a known issue and referred me to the manufacturer when I asked how long it had been known. I phoned them and they stated that there was no known issue with the phone.
Anyway, today I decided that the best thing I could do would be to research the market so that, whether I stay with my current operator or not, I had a good idea of whether what phone I wanted to upgrade to.
I started with my own operator's site and, for every phone that was available on contract, I checked the phone against a mobile phone review site I know. If the phone wasn't there then I plugged the search key:
"phone model" review uk
into Google.
I tend to skim over 5 star reviews as there's only so much "this phone is da best" I can take. ;-) I'm interested in knowing what's wrong with the phone and, more importantly, is it reliable or not. I tend to favour reviews that are longer, have useful information in them and are written by people who have had the phone for a while[1]: i.e. "this phone is poor. do not buy" would be ignored but "This phone needs recharging every day, the screen can only be seen in the dark and half the time it hangs on booting up." would get my attention. Also reviews which, in addition, show both sides of the coin -- i.e. the good and the bad would get even more attention from me.
If a 5 star review looked well thought out then I might read it. If it had the words "reliable" and/or "robust"[2] would get my attention even more. Yes, I love all the features but reliability is one of the most important features to me followed narrowly by robustness.
In the course of my research today I came across a theory postulated by a reviewer. This theory was that some phones are unreliable because mobile operators add their own software to the phone. She postulated that the phones without the operators software are a lot more stable. I don't know if that is true or not but it's an interesting theory.
[1] Most phones take weeks before they break down.
[2] Phones do get dropped despite the best care you give it.