More testaments to Nokia build quality

[slitchfield]

Not wishing to sound too much like a 'fanboy', but in anecdotal praise of Nokia's build quality and following on from my own brush with death (oh, ok, a pavement), we have a bunch of crazy Russians trying to destroy a 5800 XpressMusic and CJ's 'dad' hammering an N95 for a year. Just rounding off 2008, you know...

Read on in the full article.

[entwisi]

I am also exceptionally heavy handed and rough with phones, not on purpose but just because I can't be bothered treating it with that much care, after all its got to last me ~ 18 months or so then I get a nice shiny new one!

I've worn all the silver off my N80 down to the grey plastic underneath( the glass screen held up really well on this model), the rest of it is still brilliant, the slide is still firm and the keys much easier to use than the 95 that followed. Mmy N95 I was always worried I would damage the screen with it not being a 'hard' glass cover, I only kept it about 6 months before moving to my current e90 and it was losing its paint and the plum stuff was looking decidedly s/h.

The e90 is the daddy of build quality, solid, well made, even the paint is lasting well. My only Q is why out of the whole shell they chose to make one part(the camera and speaker surround) out of plastic when the rest is metal???? It looks silly IMHO but hey there are always the psychedelic alternatives from here http://www.verkkokauppa.com/popups/p...o.php?id=25648

[slitchfield]

Hey, metal phones have to have SOME plastic - how are the RF aerials supposed to see out? It's a serious design consideration!

[Tzer2]

Hey, metal phones have to have SOME plastic - how are the RF aerials supposed to see out? It's a serious design consideration!

Hmm... yeah, hadn't thought of that. Maybe someone should come up with an all-metal retro mobile that has an external aerial?

[argh]

The 5800 didn't get particularly great results in its class, though - 22/30.

For comparison, the HTC Touch Diamond got 25/30 and the iPhone got 24/30.

Perhaps you need to update your "Robustness" row in the smartphone grid to reflect this

[slitchfield]

Pah. They have their scoring system and I have mine. Take 10 5800's and drop them all from 2 metres onto concrete. I'd bet that 9 of them will be fine. And possibly all ten. Take 10 iPhones and drop them all in the same way and I'd bet that several have smashed screens.

Again, the iPhone has some fabulous strengths. But survivability onto concrete probably isn't one of them.

[Tzer2]

To be scientific you'd probably have to drop a hundred or more phones in absolutely identical circumstances, but that could cost tens of thousands per model (100 euro phone x 100 units = 10,000 euros). Comparing just ten models would cost hundreds of thousands.

I'm sure the manufacturers do do these tests (as AAS's video tour of Nokia's test facility showed) but they don't release the data to the public so we have no way to compare durability of phones properly. All we have is anecdotal evidence, but that's so easy to slant one way or the other...

where can i find the results of all phones being tested?

[bartmanekul]

Interesting, but theres build quality, and theres build quality.

Nokias are generally accepted as being the toughest phones about, for good reason.

But, what seems to be happening more and more, is bad build quality. Sure, they are tough, but first there was the N95's slider.

Now they have done the same with the N85.

And it appears there is a problem with many N85's GPS antenna, though its a reasonably easy fix. Though I didn't know this at the time, so mine was returned, which is just as well because I dont think I could have lived with the loose slider.

I know there is huge amounts of units produced and sold. And maybe the numbers are tiny in comparision to the majority out there. But there is certainly a significant number of bad N85 sliders about.

Perhaps the term quality control would be a better term for me to use here.

I want an N85, but the loose slider is really putting me off.

[ltv]

I have had major issues with the paint on the e90. Most of the paint on the back of the phone is gone....the battery cover is almost completely bare.

I know it has got something to do with moisture since it started during the last rainy season - small squishy bubbles started appearing and after 2-3 days the paint in that area would peel off. I have seen this happening with wall paint, but I never expected it to happen to my 850$ phone.
Some paint has also come off since removing the battery cover on the e90 involves use of fingernails or some similar object.

I must admit that with the exception of the paint issue, the phone has held up pretty well to about a year of heavy daily use. It has survived 5 or 6 drops and my toddler threw it across the room a couple of times (what is it with babies and mobile phones?). Yet all the hardware is functioning quite well except that the applications key on the qwerty keyboard is slightly shaky. So, overall I must say that the build quality is quite good in my case.

I guess it is the substantial amount of money that one pays for such a phone that makes you feel the pinch. You tend to expect that these small issues will already be taken care of. For example, my partner's e65 has almost no paint left in the bottom front section of the top slider(apparently jeans pockets do that to an e65). But that doesn't hurt as much as in the case of my e90.