Latest Android phones overtake iPhone 4 in user reviews | Hacker News Reader

Latest Android phones overtake iPhone 4 in user reviews

blog.reevoo.com

Yawn. This is such meaningless drivel. User reviews? Really? Not even the sane user reviewing both so you have some form of control?

Reviewers of anything are outliers. Generally the motivations for users to review are one or more of:

1. To complain about something. Unhappy people are more likely to make noise.

2. To justify their choice. Such reviews are very often skewed as the user is compensating for insecurity or pushing a philosophy.

3. Because they like the sound of their own voices (metaphorically speakimg); and/or

4. Because they're really happy.

Most users of a product (happy or unhappy) write no reviews. So we're talking about a vocal minority.

What's more people have a bug up their ass about the iPhone in particular. Consumer Reports for example seems to have abandoned all pretense of objectivity when it comes to the iPhone 4:

1. Despite giving the iPhone 4 their highest phone rating ever they somehow couldn't recommend it; and

2. They called the Verizon iPhone "middle-aged tech" (iirc) when nothing else has an equivalent or better screen and other specs are at best a wash.

Most iPhone users love their phones. In my experience an awful lot of Android users aren't buying an Android phone; they're not buying an iPhone either because of carrier (predominantly a US issue) or they have some objection based on the iPhone being popular or some guff about walled gardens.

Seriously 99% of this iPhone vs Android stuff is just noise and typically just link bait.

The actual reviews all seem very reasonable, and their algorithms seem to extract sensible meaning from the noise:

http://www.reevoo.com/p/samsung-galaxy-s

http://www.reevoo.com/p/apple-iphone-4-16gb

Basically, the Galaxy is slightly behind on all subsections, except battery which is its weakest point and biggest differential compared with the iPhone, and the value for money, which is much better for the Galaxy (it's about a third less to buy).

Note again, this is UK focused, where the graduations of handset price (including buying the handset separately) seem to be better reflected in your monthly bill.

As far as I can tell in the US there's no advantage to not taking the best phone they offer since you're paying the same monthly rate anyway which will dwarf the handset price.

Just noticed my current phone (the cheapest Android available, but also a diamond in the rough that has practically gone viral in the UK on the strength of word of mouth) also equals the iPhone 4 overall due to high "value for money"

http://www.reevoo.com/p/orange-san-francisco

Apparently you've never shopped on amazon or new egg where you can find a plethora of nuanced user reviews on most products. If you just skip the 1 and 5 star reviews and read the rest, you can usually get a comprehensive picture of a product.

Sometimes I wonder why so many people find it so important having the best phone ever created.

I usually settle for "good enough" and don't think much about it.

Why wouldn't you want the best in class of any product? You only "go around once."

Also, consider the upside of companies striving to produce "best in class" products. Improvements are made much quicker and price drops more rapidly.

> Why wouldn't you want the best in class of any product?

Because of the energy expended to find it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...

I can understand why wanting the best cost/benefit, but I can't understand why obsessing about having the best possible phone available this week it is so common.

There has been an interesting book from Barry Schwartz a while ago (the paradox of choice). He describes types of users, like the optimizer and the ones that go for good enough. Schwartz concludes that optimizers are usually never satisfied. They spend tons of time to find the best and then, after a short while, go on reassuring themselves, that what they have is still the best and start the hunt for the better. These are Apples best clients.

On the other hand, the good enough types make a quick decision and don't look back - or, spend sufficient time to find what they need and then don't look back.

I think it depends on your personal preferences (or on the amount of time you have available).

Who wants to spend time on the choice of a dumb phone? I certainly don't and I have better things to do. I am a user of the first 5GB iPod. It was a gorgeous tool but today I am glad that I don't have to carry this brick with me anymore. That's why I never considered an iPhone or an Android thing so far.

But, if you like, go ahead.

These are Apples best clients.

I don’t see the connection to Apple. Apple offers limited choice and little room to optimize. You get what everyone else gets, I can’t imagine “Optimizers” buying Apple products.

Edit: Wouldn’t you buy an Apple product exactly if you are tired of having to compare all the time? All of Apple’s products fit on a decent sized kitchen table (five computers, four music players, two phones, two tablets, one set-top box). Wouldn’t many people who like Apple say that the nice thing about Apple is that you can trust them, that you can blindly buy their products and still be reasonably certain that you are getting a good package? The best Android phones might well be better than the iPhone but you actually have to find them in a sea of many phones of wildly differing quality.

I think its is just the question of the size of your universe. Apple users don't compare with Lenovo and Sony but with Apple. I know a couple of Apple users who owned every generation of iPhone (and don't even consider Android).

Do they? Do you have data on that and also on other, comparable phones?

Something like 77% of iphone 4 owners were upgrades from previous iphones.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/25/77-of-iphone-4-sales-...

Since there's not much of an upgrade path for Android devices in quite the same way I suspect finding numbers to compare against will be hard. Besides, the platform didn't start to really become popular until 2009-ish, so most people are still on their first Android phone.

Well, that doesn’t really tell you anything since you have nothing to compare it against.

That stat refers to the first month of sales. I would imagine "normal" people neither time their purchases to coincide with Apple product announcements, nor like to pay early termination fees to be the first on the block with a new gadget.

Theres two other things I've noticed about the phenomena. When an iProduct is launched, my local Apple store has a line around the block on launch day. But then a week later, no line and plenty of inventory. You can just walk into the store and buy one.

When a new major Android phone is launched, there's no line, but it takes weeks on a waiting list to get one and months for the inventory to catch back up so you can just go buy one.

I have a feeling one of the two (or both) is either a manifestation of what we're talking about, or its Nintendo style artificial scarcity at play.

"Do they? Do you have data on that and also on other, comparable phones?"

Internet search is your friend

(try to avoid the word Google in connection with friend ;o)

I’m not the one making the claim, I don’t have to search for anything.

Apple provides reassuring reinforcement that you have indeed bought the "best" (at least until they come out with new model in year or so. Apple products are widely hyped as the "best" while actually being rather poor in everything other than style, hipness, simplicity. These "Optimizers" don't make rational choices, they are fueled by emotion, desires to feel good about themselves and better than others. These are qualities Apple markets to.

In the last 8 years I've been buying primarily Apple products: an iBook 8 years ago, an iPod mini 6 years ago, a MacBook 3 years ago, and an iPhone 2 years ago. I used to fiddle with Linux and know about the latest CPUs, but then I found that I was spending a lot of time on something of little benefit to me.

My MacBook does everything I need, and it has the Unix underpinnings I prefer. My iPhone is very useful, although it is getting a little slow as apps get bigger. I will probably upgrade to the iPhone 5 when it comes out, if it turns out to be good enough.

I'm the same way with cars. I bought a Honda Civic recently without a lot of comparison shopping because I have had good luck with them before, and I know it's a quality car. A friend of mine bought another kind of car that had some cool features that mine doesn't have, and I was a little envious for a moment, but it soon passed. I'm very happy with my solid little car.

The most interesting thing in this article is the big jump in the average review score for the Galaxy S during September. It would be great to understand why that happened, and if it was really because of a "changing mix of buyer" and/or "glossy advertising".

There was an Android update in September 2010.[1]

Edit + N.B.: The vertical axis on the graph is a "how to lie with statistics" one and makes it look like a bigger climb than it is. It does indeed overtake the iPhone but it's only a move from ~7.9 to ~8.5.

[1]http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&client=ubun...

Do normal people (read: non geeks) use Reevoo? I've never heard of it, but maybe that's because it's in the UK and I'm in the US.

The population providing the reviews can skew these types of analyses.

The market is saturated with Android devices. Of course it's going to overtake the iPhone market. If there was only one Android device available at any given time, that'd be a completely different question.

I realise my response seems more targeted towards sales than reviews, but it covers both sides.

I've heard that said many times in terms of sales. Do you really think that it applies to review scores as well?

I mean you could suggest that some niche android-powered device might so neatly fit some weird need that it gets full marks from the 3 people who buy it, which would be higher than the average of all iPhone reviews. But the example in the article is the multi-million selling Galaxy S.

(Note also it's UK focused, so AT&T versus Verizon doesn't apply)

I think the point is that if you look at the average across all devices, the iPhone is still ahead, but if there was only one Android phone (and it was one of the good ones e.g. the Samsung Galaxy S) then Android would be ahead.

The average Android review score is pulled down by the crappy Android devices. Having an open market creates higher highs and lower lows than Apple controlling everything (it seems).

And not whatsoever related to a biased agenda among the reviewers? Very different things matter to those who gravitate to one or the other. iPhone users rate it down if it doesn't work miracles without them even thinking about it. Android users rate it up for maxing out tech specs and embodying "open" principles.

True, I exaggerate. But these self-selecting groups rate on different criteria.

Yep. True. Not unbiased in the slightest. I find it interesting nonetheless as I would not have guessed it to be true...

You (and other commenters saying similar things) are definitely right on this point, but I remain interested :)

True, I exaggerate.

Again, Android is now mainstream. The iPhone is now mainstream. Any delusions that denizens of places like HN are the typical sort of buyer are terribly far off reality.

The average buyer has no such desire to hoist the flag. And every time Android comes up the anecdotes appear about how everyone anyone knows with an Android is so disappointed and just can't wait until the day that they can trade it in for an iPhone, etc. Which of course is garbage, but there it is.

Android as a mainstream platform has gotten dramatically better. Aside from improvements in the versions, the application ecosystem is what is really improving perceptions of the device. It is less common now that Android users feel like they have some sort of knock-off device, finding themselves left out of the application game.

While I do think you were confused when you wrote this (although even relative to sales it's questionable: Apple came along and decimated the entire field of J2ME devices), I would actually agree that relative to best device it is true.

Why? Because there is intense, endless competition in the Android space, with dozens of companies kicking and screaming to get on top of the pile. The pace of change on the hardware side has been blistering (less so on the software side, though Google is the critical impediment there) because of that. It is an evolutionary ecosystem.

The iPhone side of course adapts to competition, but with just a single vendor and a single set of interests, it does so much more slowly.

When the 3GS came out it was, by far, the top of the herd. When the 4 came out it was tight, but it was a bit above the best of the Android pack. With the iPhone 5...I'm not so sure. I don't know what they could reasonably do to catch up to the ridiculously equipped devices coming out now.

It sounds like your advice is for Apple to release more devices to compete at different levels of the platform.

Wow! People like the newest phones over a phone that's 6 months old? I don't believe it.

The Galaxy S (which is the focus of the article) was released in June, the same time as the iPhone 4.

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