Suggestions/Questions

[DBissett]

We've just started shopping for phone upgrades and tablets in our house. I've joined the fray after happily using a flip phone, aka dinosaur according to my daughter, and relying exclusively on our desktops until now. Turning to Anandtech for some guidance, it would be really helpful to have Forum discussions split into "Smartphone" and "Tablet" groups, or something similar. "Mobil Devices...." seems to lump too much stuff together. Also, why is there no more discussion of smartphone software by reviewers? After trying to help my tech challenged wife learn to use her S3 I'm astounded by how user unfriendly it is. I imagine now that a lot of smartphone users walk around staring at their phones because they're trying to figure out how to use them constantly. I mean the menus don't seem intuitive, they go on forever, and basic functions take a kazillion keystrokes. Anand would do a world of good in this area to come up with a "Useability Suite" of say 10-12 smartphone functions, starting with the phone functions and count the keystrokes necessary to answer/make calls, mute on/off, read/answer/create text messages, retrieve email, take a picture, etc. All the frenzied attention to hardware comparisons by reviewers everywhere seems to overlook useability comparisons almost completely. I'd like to see a real comparison between all the Android varieties and the iPhones in some controlled way like Anand is so good at in other areas. I think other review sites would do the same.

 

[pcsavvy]

It is difficult for anyone to talk specifics of each phone OS since the software is constantly being upgraded and changed to either be more user friendly or more customized or geared for a specific customer base.
There are the various incarnations of Android, Iphone, Windows, or Blackberry.
There are websites that specialize in each of the OS's and they can be a great resource to get a sense of what is involved in owning a particular OS.
Since Android has the greater market share there is quite a few web sites that specialize either the hardware/software.
For Windows, there is Windows Phone Central which covers all incarnations of Windows phones.
Iphone there is Apple website and third party websites that cover the various incarnations of Iphones.
I am not sure about Blackberry but I am sure there are websites out about that OS too.
There are quite few guidebooks about various android, iphone, blackberry and windows phones.
With so much info out there and constantly changing it would be hard for a site like Anandtech to keep up with the specifics all the time. I feel Anandtech specialty is computer parts and computers with some info on various consumer electronics. But Anandtech is not my sole source of information, if in doubt I google or bing for info and try to get as much info as possible and use a big grain of salt to filter the hype.

 

[DBissett]

Thanks. What Android sites do you like most?