Not many reviews (or any) go into deep discussions about build quality. So I felt the need for this thread. To be clear, I'm not talking about durability, we have rugged devices for that. This thread is about quality pertaining to precision, detail, and advance manufacturing processes.
I think we're lucky to see this kind of quality in gadgets and I don't think there's any consumer product that breeds new manufacturing processes like gadgets do.
The usual suspects below:
2013 N7: Its the best bang for your buck tablet bar none. This serves as a good baseline for looking at quality. Above you see the large plastic gasket around the screen of where it meets the body. We'll use this as a reference for the other devices.
HTC One: Kudos to HTC for pushing the bar. HTC likes to talk about "zero gap" and it means exactly that. To achieve this zero gap, they poured plastic into the gaps of the aluminum body. What you get is direct contact and zero gaps. However, plastic is used to achieve this and makes it a little less impressive. The screen here also has a plastic gasket except the areas of where it meets the aluminum speaker grills.
iPhone5: Here we again see a plastic gasket around the entire perimeter of the screen. The back side of the phone we can see the gap between the glass pane and aluminum body. In the iPhone 5 manufacturing video, Jony Ive narrates that they use high powered cameras to match 725 cuts of glass. Unfortunately, we're still seeing gaps here.
iPad Mini: No plastic screen gasket, superb. Gaps are still present, but its a very tight fitting device (smaller gap than the 5) with no plastic on any part of the body except the home button. iPad1-iPad4 all have plastic gaskets (iPad1 has a rubber gasket) and the iPad mini is their first tablet to forgo this plastic piece. The screen and body of the mini reminds me of a finely crafted watch.
Any other devices that exhibit exceptional build quality? Post them here.
I think we're lucky to see this kind of quality in gadgets and I don't think there's any consumer product that breeds new manufacturing processes like gadgets do.
The usual suspects below:
2013 N7: Its the best bang for your buck tablet bar none. This serves as a good baseline for looking at quality. Above you see the large plastic gasket around the screen of where it meets the body. We'll use this as a reference for the other devices.
HTC One: Kudos to HTC for pushing the bar. HTC likes to talk about "zero gap" and it means exactly that. To achieve this zero gap, they poured plastic into the gaps of the aluminum body. What you get is direct contact and zero gaps. However, plastic is used to achieve this and makes it a little less impressive. The screen here also has a plastic gasket except the areas of where it meets the aluminum speaker grills.
iPhone5: Here we again see a plastic gasket around the entire perimeter of the screen. The back side of the phone we can see the gap between the glass pane and aluminum body. In the iPhone 5 manufacturing video, Jony Ive narrates that they use high powered cameras to match 725 cuts of glass. Unfortunately, we're still seeing gaps here.
iPad Mini: No plastic screen gasket, superb. Gaps are still present, but its a very tight fitting device (smaller gap than the 5) with no plastic on any part of the body except the home button. iPad1-iPad4 all have plastic gaskets (iPad1 has a rubber gasket) and the iPad mini is their first tablet to forgo this plastic piece. The screen and body of the mini reminds me of a finely crafted watch.
Any other devices that exhibit exceptional build quality? Post them here.
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