Droosh

True. There are jobs title antenna designer for a reason ;)

I wish these could be edited. Sorry for going 4 deep.

I looked it up. Not Samsung, but check out this commercial for the NTT Docomo’s Touch Wood SH-08C phone.

It would be nice to break it out, however, it would next to impossible to forecast accurately. I’m guessing if they had 20/20 foresight in this area, the scores would be much lower for many devices. A long term road test update would be a nice add to follow-up the reviews, although of limited worth given the pace of new phone adoption.

The phone’s not out in the US. Would you rather wait several months for a review? The Verge wants to get out reviews ASAP to compete with other sites.
If quality and consistency were the only concerns the reviews would be better, but stale. See Anandtech.

Not true. I have 3 batteries for my Nexus. All have NFC.

Samsung makes a wood dumb phone. It’s gorgeous IMO.

I believe you’re wrong. However, since the verge hass never published a description of more precisely what they consider for each category fair minded people can debate it. Until they do this or publish a weighted score card with weight sub-categories we will never know. This is difficult and the reason they stopped giving scores at Engadget. You really should read the text and evaluate yourself IMO.

FWIW I would break-out design something like this: .
Design (30% of overall score) composed of:
Aesthetics (20%)
Forecasted durability (30%)
Ergonomics (30%)
Functionality/utility (20%)

It’s part of the design category. This category includes durability, functionality, ergonomics… not just aesthetics.

Good point. It has yet to be seen how the US versions will fair. Especially CDMA with S4 chips for example.
However, it is probably fair to assume a trade-off as the glass and metal chassis of the 4/4s is not as transparent to radio waves as cheap plastic. This should give the GSIII an edge in signal quality (assuming all other things are exactly the same).

It take time for it to become apparent that a design flaw in the antenna can cause reception issues when held certain ways or that if the phone is dropped that it breaks more than other flagship devices.

What makes you think that aesthetics and ergonomics are the only to subsets of the design score? They have never published a low level score card nor their weightings.

Not to mention durability. Aesthetics is really the most subjective subset of the design score and should only be a small part IMO. I wouldn’t mind seeing the verge reviewers agree on a weighted scorecard with with percentage weights given to each category and sub-category. This would lead to more consistanancy across reviewers.

It is durable. He says that when you drop it it doesn’t break. It is comfortable to hold. Both are considered design.

Aesthetics is the most subjective sub-criteria of the design score and you seem to want it to cont the most?

Example, you may think that the iPhone is beautiful and has high end materials. Others would find that glass on the back is heavy and breaks when dropped and should count as a significant design flaw.

why does it say Android in the top line with the desktop browsers and then you list mobile separately? Does Safari in the to line include the mobile safari browser? Does either (or both) of the Android references include any of the numerous 3rd party browsers used on Android devices such as Dolphin and Chrome beta?
It’s tough to really understand this without being able to really parse the data.

Given that Chrome (and Firefox) would be considered superior than IE and Safari by mose Verge users, I do find it interesting that it appears that more Microsoft users seem comfortable leaving the native browser that comes with their OS than do Mac users.
Thanks for sharing Nilay.

How about making it tap-a-talk compatible. I don’t need another whole app for one individual site.

FWIW, I’ve heard that the Revue is much improved after the last two firmware updates (although stills needs a rebooting now and again.)

I have this problem with Boxee and Roku. Supposedly Netflix WI is supposed to allow multiple profiles soon so that you can enable parental controls on a profile for the kids.

With all the software updates the boxee box browser is much better. Certain apps like HBO Go work through it’s browser which allows you to get HBO content through your ISP despite your cable company. The HBO app on the Roku, won’t work for most people FYI.
I’d also say the Boxee UI is better than apple’s but it wan’t called out at the end.