The i8910 (and more) join the Grid

I personally have used Samsung i8910HD from Orange in the UK and to be honest I did not notice any of the problems Steve talked about when typing with the on-screen keyboard. My experience was very good. There was no need to intentionally slow down my typing so as avoid hitting two keys at the same time and generating erroneous entry as Steve's pre-review said. When I did intentionally touch two letters on the keyboard simultaneously, out of curiosity, it acted just like a physical keyboard and displayed the first letter and then the second twice. The truth is physical keyboards (the ones on our PC and Mac) don't have multi-touch and yet are functional, so please lets not make it seem as if without multi-touch virtual keyboards are not effective.

I think the difference between my experience with the Samsung i8910HD and Steve's is the fact I was using a production device already on the shelves at you local Orange store and Steve used a pre-production device.

Until Steve gets a production device he’s opinions might be inaccurate especially when used in a comparison tool such as the Smartphone Grid.

Its early days but I think the Samsung i8910HD is going to stand out as a stellar device

Ziko Mgbatogu
!

[slitchfield]

Fair comment, hopefully I'll have my hands on a production, SIM-free device very soon!

[jonnybruha]

I do still really like this grid. I haven't seen anything like it on any other site.

Something to keep in mind: If you read Howard Chui's review of the Motorola Razr from many years ago, he scores it very highly, but he also adds a disclaimer at the end that reads:

*Please note these ratings are temporal and are really only valid for the date they were assigned. A phone which receives a rating of 5 a year ago will probably get a lower rating today.

I think the grid could benefit from what his disclaimer says. As Nokia Maps takes advantage of the digital compass in the N97, so the quality of Nokia Maps in the N95 must drop a bit, lest we eventually have a slew of perfect smartphones, making the grid worthless.

Hello,

a lot of criticism in the GPS department could be solved by separating scores for "GPS hardware" and for "included GPS software". In that way we can separate between potential (hardware) and actual realization (possibilities with included software). I will find it a lot more useful in that way.

Also, I think the person who suggested to review screen scores because of new amoLED screens is right.

Oh, and one of the scores I find more useful is outdoor visibility, because this is the only place in which I can look at this data which is very important for me. Thumbs up for this one!

[Zuber]

Has someone at Samsung upset you Steve

The grid appears to be broken. Omnia HD doesn't get a score at the moment. Problem looks related to Battery column.

Zuber

[jfive]

well, based on your chart, i have the phone i"m supposed to have. the n95 8gb. i"ve had a few of these phone and always seem to come back to trusty old n95 8gb. we'll have to wait and see what the future holds.

Nice way to find your phone. It's giving me 5800(that i already have) and N95 8GB(that i had).
Got 3 phones that i'm thinking Omnia HD, N97 and HTC Touch Diamond 2.
Diamond 2 is really interesting phone and would be easy choise with Symbian, Android or OSX, but can't get over with the fact that it got WM. Will see.
With N97 i like the device design and the UI implementation and the services that Nokia offers + i'm a bit of a Nokia fanboy Omnia HD have actually been getting some not that good reviews from the ones that have jumped to it, but still on paper the phone is great. I don't really care of the OMAP3(it's a bit wasted power on 5th edition IMO). N97 with it's ARM 437 and the updates Nokia have been giving lately to it's phones can deliver just as much to menu speeds as that 600Mhz(not interetsted on gaming). With optimizing you can do wonder with Symbian. One big thing that could make me buy Omnia HD is definitely the screen and the price difference unlocked isn't much of anything.

[jonnybruha]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Nice way to find your phone. It's giving me 5800(that i already have) and N95 8GB(that i had).
Got 3 phones that i'm thinking Omnia HD, N97 and HTC Touch Diamond 2.
Diamond 2 is really interesting phone and would be easy choise with Symbian, Android or OSX, but can't get over with the fact that it got WM. Will see.
With N97 i like the device design and the UI implementation and the services that Nokia offers + i'm a bit of a Nokia fanboy Omnia HD have actually been getting some not that good reviews from the ones that have jumped to it, but still on paper the phone is great. I don't really care of the OMAP3(it's a bit wasted power on 5th edition IMO). N97 with it's ARM 437 and the updates Nokia have been giving lately to it's phones can deliver just as much to menu speeds as that 600Mhz(not interetsted on gaming). With optimizing you can do wonder with Symbian. One big thing that could make me buy Omnia HD is definitely the screen and the price difference unlocked isn't much of anything.

Cool story, bro.

[slitchfield]

Thanks, Omnia HD column now fixed. [red face] Oops. More enhancements coming next week (extra rows, N97).

BTW, if you run a blog or site, feel free to link to the grid, all link love gratefully accepted 8-)

[Zuber]

Hi Steve,

Looking much better now (at least for the phones I find of interest). OmniaHD and 5800 come up tops on occasions when N95 would have pushed the HD out.

I'm gussing the Samsung ranking will improve further when you get to play with it again. Particularly on the keyboard front given others have had better experiances.

Focusing on other units listed.

I think you are being a bit hard on some of the HTC units (or too generous to others). In particular, I'm thinking of the screen resolution column.

To give some of these units with 800 x480 screen res. 8 where as others have 7 (e.g. OmniaHD and 5800) or 9 (E90) for much lower res. seams wrong. The only negative is no. of colours, but that's not screen resolution and so I would have thought that was covered under screen clarity.

File Management 6 seams a bit low too. Not sure what improvements you are looking for here, since all the devices have a fairly low figure.

Suggestions in terms of improving the grid in general (It's nice, but can always be better ).

Allow rearrange or removal of columns. As the grid gets bigger, having to scroll is going to get worse.

Allow some filtering based on say platform and some of the clear cut objective criteria. e.g. Touch/No Touch. Perhaps have a Critical option that simply rules out the entries that would not qualify.

Need to be careful, so that people don't rule out things they would not have considered. Perhaps only offer the filters at the bottom of the screen.

I find 3 levels a bit limited. 5 would work better for me. No Interest (x0), nice/fun to have (x1), quite important (x2), very important (x3) critical/decision maker (x5).

Finally, would be great if I could put my own values in based on my own perceptions. You could have 'Famous Techie (or non techie for that matter) People' fill in their ratings on the various criteria and then have users come along and complete the grid and find what xxxxxxx thinks (Or you could just start with Rafe, Steve and Ewan). I spent some time yesterday doing my own version in excel just comparing my favourates (sad I know).

So many ideas, so little time...

I know you need to keep it simple as well.

Keep up the good work. Hope you get some generous sponsors soon.

Zuber

[ashu]

The grid threw up E71 and N95 with equal scores for me and 2nd was N82.

I though own N79.