Lumia 920 Review - clear bias

[umairawan]

THE VERGE POSTED THE REVIEW FOR THE LUMIA 920 AND IT GAVE THE PHONE 7.9
(this article shows how bias the review is)
***i merely copied and pasted this article from one of the readers who wrote this article on their site.



The Lumia 920 review masquerades under the cover of objectiveness but is nothing more than a well worded biased hatchet job. Balance is not saying negative statements followed by positive statements in a belief that they will net each other off. Balance is reporting facts and being objective.

It's becoming more apparent that the sole aim of the Verge staff in using non Apple hardware is to write articles and reviews to confirm their bias and re-affirm to the Apple followers that they need not try or buy other devices because their decision to choose Apple is sound.

Some examples of the bias

"The Lumia 920 isn't quite the revelation in phone design that its predecessors were" - yet the Iphone 5 scores a 9 on design when it has not looked substantially different to a 2 year old Iphone 4. The argument being that the Iphone manifests a design philosophy that is not subject to frequent change.

"I can't help but poke fun at smartphone manufacturers touting subtle refinements in their LCD displays with abstruse marketing terminology " Yet he mentions the "iPhone 5's Retina Display". Retina is a marketing term - if I watch my 50" TV from over 20 feet away I cannot discern individual pixels so does that make it retina?

"Another thing I noticed is that camera shake can still make itself apparent in photos, even with this optical image stabilization " - The assumeption here is that unless image stabilisation provides 100% stabilization its another gimmick - what complete nonsense - no camera can provide complete image stabilisation.

" they?ll be less enthused about the 920?s automatic white balance" - no mention of the manual white balance or a thorough review of the camera.

"To most eyes, the images look a little washed out and don?t "pop," with not enough warm tones." However Dieter mentions he does not like the over saturated colours of AMOLED screen but then critiques the more realistic and true colour reproduciton of Nokia camera images as saying that they are washed out.

Now looking at the scores - even if the reviews are done by different people there should be consistency in the scoring methodology or there is no point to it. There is some merit to the argument that some subtle differences are lost in the scoring but not to the point of creating perverse scores. Also as mentioned Tom Warren, Josh Topolsky, and Vlad Savov contributed to the review then we can say the scoring should be comparable to other reviews.

Design

Iphone scored 9, Lumia 8 - design is in the eye of the beholder but to say one design does not look old because it is holding to a design philosophy but then to say another requires refresh shows clear hypocrisy.

Display

Iphone 9, lumia 9 - yet the Lumia has a larger screen, higher ppi, faster refresh, more sensitive screen - all facts

Camera

Iphone 8, Lumia 8 - in comparisons the Lumia is the outright winner on every occasion.

Reception

iphone 9, Lumia 7 - on a preproduction handset without finalised software -

Ecosystem

Iphone 10, Lumia 5 - now somehow the Lumia 800, 900 scored higher on the ecosystem when the Windows ecosystem was further behind that of Ios.

The only consistency in the Verge reviews is the bias

 

[Winterfang]

Verge has different reviewers.

 

[a5cent]

Verge has different reviewers.

And yet they are all worthless... or at least they refuse to write any review worth reading, no matter what device they test. Not just due to bias, but just general incompetency.

 

[Calot]

I think someone paid them NOT to give WP8 devices more than 8.0

The Lumia CLEARLY deserved something MUCH closer to a 9.

Sigh.

There goes a few thousand phones sold.

Sadness.

 

[Winterfang]

Is this from a 920 review? I didn't knew it was out.

 

[apoc527]

Most people don't read reviews on tech sites before they go in and purchase a phone. VERY few people actually do their homework. If they did, we'd probably be better off, but ah well.

My point is this: phones will be sold at retail by the carrier employees. The phones will have to impress in person, not in an article online. If the new Nokias (and WP8s) are capable of doing that, they will sell. I really do think it's about as simple as that.

 

[Winterfang]

Well the video review was pretty nice. Very objective nothing unusual.

Complained about the thickess and weight
Love the darkshots, love the bright ones.
Love the video, loves the camera
Loves the screen
Dislikes the OS.
Dislikes that there's compromises and lack of definitely date.

 

[umairawan]

Is this from a 920 review? I didn't knew it was out.

they posted the review few hours ago

 

[a5cent]

There goes a few thousand phones sold.

Sadness.

More like a few 100'000 phones... enough people read these reviews who end up making recommendations to family and friends... those recommendations are far more influential than sales staff at carrier's stores.

Companies fortunes and peoples jobs depend on these reviews. The people at Nokia worked really hard on this device, and they deserve a fair shake. As it is, I don't know if this review gave them that fair shake or not, but I find it highly unlikely. At the very least the reception score seems unfair: You don't dish out low scores that you aren't certain are well deserved. You don't publish if your data isn't ready. In this case the verge did both.

A thread for this topic already exists here.

 

[Winterfang]

I just read it, is overall pretty positive. I don't know where the hate comes front, and is a lot more professionally done than the one I posted.

 

[aubreyq]

I just read it, is overall pretty positive. I don't know where the hate comes front, and is a lot more professionally done than the one I posted.

I agree. It's not that bad of a review.

 

[a5cent]

I just read it, is overall pretty positive. I don't know where the hate comes front, and is a lot more professionally done than the one I posted.

Again I must humbly disagree with aubreyq (sorry). It is not hate. It's more frustration with incompetency. The verge review is somewhat better than the one you linked to, yes, but it's still nothing more than an opinion piece, which simply shouldn't qualify as tech journalism.

This is an example of a good review, although for the ATIV S. Just the fact that they employ lab equipment should tell you they operate on a completely different level.

I don't trust anyone to be impartial in these types of tests. People hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see. It's human nature. With all the bias on this forum, why do we expect reviewers to be any better? They aren't. Due to financial concerns they are often worse. They need a more scientific approach to reviewing devices which the verge lacks completely... a more systematic approach that guarantees a non biased view of the device which lays the foundation on which they build... a.k.a. measurements.

They also just don't know their stuff. For example this (copied this from the other thread):

Better review than I was expecting from them, but still a ton of factual errors:

Nokia calls this a ClearBlack display, which consists of polarizing layers of glass to help make blacks deeper and reduce reflections. It's technology that was introduced back in 2010, and here it doesn't seem to have much effect. The blacks on the 920 aren't nearly as deep as on the 900 — but the tradeoff is well worth it in my opinion.

ClearBlack refers only to Nokia's optical solution for reducing reflections. It can't magically bestow an LCD screen with the same black levels as an AMOLED screen (like the Lumia 900 has), but according to his statement that is what he expects of it. It's like saying: This Ferrari's 400 HP engine doesn't seem to have much effect as it doesn't enable the car to fly. Had he measured reflectivity the effect would have been obvious. Shouldn't these guys at least know what Nokia's marketing buzz words actually refer to?

Just one example, many more exist... :-/

 

[firstness]

There is no such thing as an impartial review. Each site will insert its own bias to match with the demographic of the site's visitors. Try reading about the same political event on MSNBC and Fox News. The best we can hope for is that the phones are good enough that their strengths shine through regardless.

 

[Winterfang]

This example is kind of dumb. He was just comparing the two and even then, the reviewer stated that it was a worthy trade off and that he prefer better to have a visible black than to deal with the oversaturation of the amoled displays.

I honestly believe that some fans fall too much for the hype and every criticism is overreacted. Is a very positive review, are people angry because it got 7.9'd? This ain't Gamefaqs or Neogaf, relax.

 

[a5cent]

This example is kind of dumb. He was just comparing the two and even then, the reviewer stated that it was a worthy trade off and that he prefer better to have a visible black than to deal with the oversaturation of the amoled displays.

I honestly believe that some fans fall too much for the hype and every criticism is overreacted. Is a very positive review, are people angry because it got 7.9'd? This ain't Gamefaqs or Neogaf, relax.

Maybe you don't care if the reviewers don't understand what they are talking about, but I do.

The 7.9 rating has no influence on how I judge the quality of this review. I care about the testing method, because I want at least some insurance that the review is free of bias, which the verge can not offer, due to a total lack of anything resembling a formal testing method. Is that so hard to understand?

 

[MaulerX]

Like I said in another thread, my main gripe with The Verge is the way they score the Ecosystem. Basically, they have no clue what the word Ecosystem means. It always drags down the overall score.

In essence, all of their Windows Phone reviews come with a built-in -1.5 which is why they're so predictable I just won't bother with them anymore.

 

[Calot]

I agree. It's not that bad of a review.

Most people will just scroll down to see that BIG number. And that number does not even make it to 8.

It clearly deserves at least an 8.5. Which would make a lot of potential buyers take the plunge.

That webpage must get MILLIONS of hits every month. 1% of it looking at those reviews not getting to at least an 8.0 and changing their minds is not a stretch or exaggeration.

 

[Calot]

Like I said in another thread, my main gripe with The Verge is the way they score the Ecosystem. Basically, they have no clue what the word Ecosystem means. It always drags down the overall score.

In essence, all of their Windows Phone reviews come with a built-in -1.5 which is why they're so predictable I just won't bother with them anymore.

If anything, the ecosystem should be higher than most.

Being that it has NFC and wireless charging.

And Nokia Maps

And Nokia Transit

And Nokia City Lens

.... no quality apps, heh?

 

[baseballbert]

8x!

 

[Calot]

8x!

If I did not care for the camera, the black ceramic keys, the slightly bigger screen and the Nokia Apps (Transit, City lens...) I would definately get the 8X, as it is a very, very nice looking phone.