Your honest view of smartphone brands

[mammador]

What is your honest view of smartphone brands?

Here is mine:

Apple - too highly priced, but still the king of smartphones.
Samsung - good phones in general
HTC - have models that best rival Apple's
Blackberry/RIM - BS, only good for BBM and social networking. Poor features compared to the previous three makers
LG/Motorola/Nokia et al - Never heard much good of these

 

[zerocool84]

LG/Motorola/Nokia et al - Never heard much good of these

You've never read any tech news in the past decade???

 

[Fire&Blood]

What is your honest view of smartphone brands?

Here is mine:

Apple - too highly priced, but still the king of smartphones.
Samsung - good phones in general
HTC - have models that best rival Apple's
Blackberry/RIM - BS, only good for BBM and social networking. Poor features compared to the previous three makers
LG/Motorola/Nokia et al - Never heard much good of these

Wow. you joined the mobile game way too late to make bold statements. Don't know what's worse, dismissing OEM's as you do or trying to sum them up with 1 liners...

 

[Rottie]

Apple is great at creativing smartphone and tablet
Samsung is good with form factor design like Nexus S
HTC is known for high end design like EVO
that is my lousy opinion and poor judgement

 

[Kabob]

Wow. you joined the mobile game way too late to make bold statements. Don't know what's worse, dismissing OEM's as you do or trying to sum them up with 1 liners...

+1

OP, it doesn't really help your case that you lump LG/Motorola/Nokia into the "don't know" category considering their market shares/impact.

That's like saying Toyota and Ford are great but you don't really know much about this "Honda" company.

 

[shortylickens]

What is your honest view of smartphone brands?

Here is mine:

Apple - too highly priced, but still the king of smartphones.
Samsung - good phones in general
HTC - have models that best rival Apple's
Blackberry/RIM - BS, only good for BBM and social networking. Poor features compared to the previous three makers
LG/Motorola/Nokia et al - Never heard much good of these

Then clearly you dont leave your basement much, and only surf porn.

 

[bucwylde23]

Who is this Motorola company? Do they even make phones anymore?

 

[judasmachine]

Motorola makes great phones, I just don't like the locked boot loader. That said the devs have souped up the X just nicely.

 

[boomhower]

Apple/HTC-top of the heap
Motorola-great hardware, lesser so Android layer, locked bootloader sucks
Samsung-Great designs but buggy with piss poor support to fix the bugs.
Nokia-Great hardware and some of the best keyboards but stuck on an outdated OS.
Sony/LG-Never been much of a player
RIM-Desperately needs to get with the times if they want to survive.

 

[Kabob]

Apple/HTC-top of the heap
Motorola-great hardware, lesser so Android layer, locked bootloader sucks
Samsung-Great designs but buggy with piss poor support to fix the bugs.
Nokia-Great hardware and some of the best keyboards but stuck on an outdated OS.
Sony/LG-Never been much of a player
RIM-Desperately needs to get with the times if they want to survive.

I'll debate you there. The LG Optimus line has been pretty good and the dual core 2x phones are shaping up to be mighty fine. Sony...they need some work.

 

[boomhower]

I'll debate you there. The LG Optimus line has been pretty good and the dual core 2x phones are shaping up to be mighty fine. Sony...they need some work.

The optimus is a damn fine lower end phone, I forgot about that one. Yes, their new phones look like contenders but until they are out and proven to be I don't consider them a player. Sony's phones have always looked good but that has never worked out though. Same with Samsung, look good and have good specs but in the real world they are buggy crap.

 

[alent1234]

as a iOS and android user

apple - expensive but worth it for a lot of people. good quality software, good hardware, excellent support

Moto- hear that them and vzw are top for updating their phones

HTC- have the inspire, worth the $20 i paid for it. not more than $50 or so

RIM - only reason they aren't gone is the BOGO and free deals

android is OK, but flaky and apple's hardware quality is generally better than htc/moto. and the app store is a lot better than the android market. but i love my 4.3" screen and won't go back to the tiny iphone screens. and love my ipad 2. use it more than my Inspire

 

[dpodblood]

Apple - Trendy. Nice hardware, and software, but overhyped.
Samsung - Great hardware, no software support.
HTC - Great hardware, and software, but more expensive.
Moto - Nice hardware, but not as nice as the previously mentioned. Screens aren't as good as Samsung, or Apple. Crappy locked out bootloader.
RIM - Great phones for business use. The best physical keyboards. Not a lot of fun to play with otherwise.

 

[Cuda1447]

Apple - Overhyped, overpriced oversimplified.
HTC - Overall best quality handset maker
Motorola - Great hardware, shit reliability. Will never buy one.
LG - Up and coming, great reliability. If they can get better screen quality these guys could be a big player.
Samsung - Best screens in the industry, horrible support. Could be a great company, could be.
RIM - Outdated and out of touch. Also ridiculously arrogant.
Huawei - SHIT.

 

[YoungGun21]

I think those of you saying HTC is high-end are quite wrong. As far as build quality, Moto is top dog.

I think rather than rank them in one category, maybe make it hardware and software.

Hardware:
Moto - solid quality, reception
HTC - sketchy, mostly flimsy plastics, terrible reception
Samsung - SGS phones had shitty GPS reception
Apple - meh

Software:
Moto - Motoblur decent, locked bootloaders, have had some bad updates
HTC - great for updates, fairly open, Sense is awesome
Samsung - ugh. don't even get me started.
Apple - blah

HTC phones are very light though, so that plastic isn't always a con.
Samsung has great hardware, but they just suck at teh softwarez.

 

[abaez]

Apple - Great Hardware, great software (with cons)
HTC - Decent hardware, good software, weak battery life across all lines
Samsung - Solid hardware, piss-poor support after buying
Motorola - Great hardware, decent to bad software
LG - Decent hardware (feels flimsy), unsure on software as I haven't used an LG phone before
Nokia - Amazing hardware (better or on par with Apple), crap software
RIM - Great hardware (can go through alot), solid software if it fits you (which it doesn't for many)
Kyocera - Hyundai a few years ago, the Echo is decent at least

 

[dguy6789]

Only going to comment on the ones I have extensive experience with:

Apple: Great hardware, polished software
Motorola: The best hardware I've ever seen, lousy lousy clunky software
HTC: Hardware leaves much to be desired, software is polished but not without its quirks

 

[randomlinh]

HP Palm: great OS, questionable execution

Yes, I still would like to see them get some traction. Seems everyone is in the 4"+ phone camp, and the Pre3 is my only shot at something smallish with *hopefully* decent hardware

 

[jonny13]

Apple - Great Hardware, great software (with cons)
HTC - Decent hardware, good software, weak battery life across all lines
Samsung - Solid hardware, piss-poor support after buying
Motorola - Great hardware, decent to bad software
LG - Decent hardware (feels flimsy), unsure on software as I haven't used an LG phone before
Nokia - Amazing hardware (better or on par with Apple), crap software
RIM - Great hardware (can go through alot), solid software if it fits you (which it doesn't for many)
Kyocera - Hyundai a few years ago, the Echo is decent at least

I was going to make a separate post, but this pretty much sums it up. I've owned the Droid Incredible and Droid X in the past year and Motorola definitely is better at battery life and build quality. HTC is definitely better at software. If they were to merge, it would be great.

 

[mammador]

Wow. you joined the mobile game way too late to make bold statements. Don't know what's worse, dismissing OEM's as you do or trying to sum them up with 1 liners...

I've rated them. Who are you to say I should?

 

[alent1234]

like iOS but the simplicity can drive you crazy

on my INspire i have a The Weather Channel widget. takes 2 seconds to check weather. on iOS you have to open the app.

if you're chatting then on android you have handcent that pops up on top of other apps. on iOS you have to switch back and forth between apps and chatting

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Apple- locked down but consistent software, generally popular hardware design.

HTC- Fast updates and good industrial design, hardware tends to be average. Sense is mature and likable at this point

Moto- Good hardware and design,quick updates, awful software, locked bootloaders. Motoblur is a curse.

Samsung- The best SoC's and displays you can get, acceptable but not stunning industrial design, slow updates in the US. TouchWiz is very polarizing but it does bring better media capability than other manufacturers provide.

Lg - Seems to be building momentum. They have a lot of powerful new phones on the way and are also promising some impressive displays to go with them. Uncertain upgrades and software at this point.

Nokia - absolutely horrible hardware and software, good industrial design.

 

[ew915]

Apple- locked down but consistent software, generally popular hardware design.

HTC- Fast updates and good industrial design, hardware tends to be average. Sense is mature and likable at this point

Moto- Good hardware and design,quick updates, awful software, locked bootloaders. Motoblur is a curse.

Samsung- The best SoC's and displays you can get, acceptable but not stunning industrial design, slow updates in the US. TouchWiz is very polarizing but it does bring better media capability than other manufacturers provide.

Lg - Seems to be building momentum. They have a lot of powerful new phones on the way and are also promising some impressive displays to go with them. Uncertain upgrades and software at this point.

Nokia - absolutely horrible hardware and software, good industrial design.

I'm just wondering what do you mean by industrial design? HTC phones are built like crap with glue, tape, double sided tape and very few screws to hold the phone together. Their molding process is inferior to the one of Samsung, or LG as the same HTC phone will always have different finish in terms of precision in the gaps. Also HTC is one of the few manufacturers that people reports having dust under the screen.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I'll debate you there. The LG Optimus line has been pretty good and the dual core 2x phones are shaping up to be mighty fine. Sony...they need some work.

Sony's smartphone line needs some work, but they've been a solid dumbphone/featurephone company for sometime now. I've gone through 3x Sony Ericsson handsets. I know they barely hit the US, so that's probably why no one knows shit about them... kinda like Nokia's N-series.

My take:
Apple: Only recent. iPhone and what not. Pretty good, though slow to see change.

Motorola: You guys give them way too much credit. Overseas they're practically an epic fail facepalm company. The RAZR stagnated the American phone market for YEARS while people were off using LED flash and FM radio and wifi on their phones. They're only half alive because Verizon spoon fed them and kept them alive with the Droid 1. They're here because of exclusivity. They don't fare well overseas for a reason when they fight against the full HTC and Samsung lineup. They're obviously spread thin and can't even maintain updates for their overseas products. It took til MARCH this year to get Froyo across the Milestone 1.

Samsung: Pretty good. I know the Galaxy S was a big problem in the US. It wasn't the best overseas, but it's a huge sell. All your GPS problems and slow updates... blame your carriers. The Galaxy S is the Galaxy S across Asia and Europe. But the minute it hits the Americas, it splits into 5 fucking versions for a mere 300 million people. You wonder why Europe gets swift updates when all 700 million GSM customers use the same phone. They'd get a -1 star on Yelp from me for their screwup, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Blame your carriers first.

LG - They have some good phones. Even during featurephone times, the Viewty was a huge hit. The Optimus will be a decent phone in their lineup, but I think they need a full lineup like HTC to really compete.

Nokia - Bad on software, but why do you always criticize hardware? Do you REALLY need a 2ghz processor to run S^3 right now? How many of you have handled S60v5 or S^3? You don't need a blazing processor. You might as well slam Apple for its iPhone 4's 800mhz processor, because from a UI point all these weaker CPUs seem to completely outperform an Android device running an dual core processor still. Nokia brought 5MP + Xenon flash in 2007... a concept we still haven't seen here. You could argue S^3 sucks which I agree and it's almost like a dumbphone, but from a dumbphone perspective, Symbian is a champion in OS and functionality.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Nokia - Bad on software, but why do you always criticize hardware? Do you REALLY need a 2ghz processor to run S^3 right now? How many of you have handled S60v5 or S^3? You don't need a blazing processor. You might as well slam Apple for its iPhone 4's 800mhz processor, because from a UI point all these weaker CPUs seem to completely outperform an Android device running an dual core processor still. Nokia brought 5MP + Xenon flash in 2007... a concept we still haven't seen here. You could argue S^3 sucks which I agree and it's almost like a dumbphone, but from a dumbphone perspective, Symbian is a champion in OS and functionality.

Clock speed is irrelevant, all of nokia's phones with the exception of the N900 are still using ARM 11 processors which is absolutely pathetic. For reference the G1 also had a ARM 11 cpu and it was only clocked slightly lower than the cpu in the N8.