Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

My favourite website to go for reviews just got their hands on the HTC Magic and have posted a full-blown review. The main reason why I like going to the website is because they tend to provide, while slightly biased, very detailed reviews, including extra’s like 360-degree spin, high resolution photos, screen captures, and my favourite – the audio signal quality chart. They also provide highly detailed specs of every GSM phone there is out there, and allow for searching and comparing of phones. They also provide phone ratings, and even links to sellers.

Actually it was the audio signal chart that I wanted to look at most. GSMArena calls it Tolerable, and its exactly what I expected after using it to listen to music – virtually no lows, and good mid to high range, maybe dropping off a little early on the highs. Comparing to the iPhone 3GS, the numbers look quite poor, however when I’m listening to it in my head phones, most songs really are tolerable. I’m sure that those with lower expectation of audio quality would even be pleased with it.

I’m using Ultimate Ears: SuperFi 3 Studio, and sorry if it seems a little like a sales pitch, but the head phones really do sound amazing, especially when you get them for $34.99!

That said, the overall review takes a generally positive light of the phone, probably a little more positive than mine, and compares the phone to the iPhone 3GS, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and HTC Touch Diamond2. If you’re serious about getting the phone, have a read through the review, its good fun if nothing else.

GSMArena: HTC Magic review: Practical magic

-Nokia FanBoy

I was glancing over various posts throughout the web today and two posts caught my eye. While I likely wouldn’t have covered something as dry as financial figures for a company, even if its Nokia, reading these posts highlighted that most news can be spun two ways.

The cold, hard fact of the matter is that while Nokia is enjoying a steady increase of market share and operating profit compared to Q109, when compared to last years (Q208) figures, the numbers look a little more dismal.

GSMArena (read) is reporting that the numbers are a success, that Nokia is looking good as its coming out of a hole of a depression:

Nokia have just announced their Q2 financial report. The numbers are showing sings of recovering from the shock of the recession – their operating profit went up by almost 51% and their estimated market share increased a percent to 38%. The total number of phones they shipped was just over 103.2 million, a healthy improvement over the 93.2 million the previous quarter.

Symbian Freak (read) on the other hand is reporting this in a more negative aspect, instead focusing on the fact that compared to last year, the figures are horrid.

Nokia’s second quarter 2009 reported operating profit decreased 71% to EUR 427 million, compared with EUR 1.5 billion in the second quarter 2008. Nokia’s second quarter 2009 non-IFRS operating profit decreased 62% to EUR 775 million, compared with EUR 2.1 billion in the second quarter 2008. Nokia’s second quarter 2009 reported operating margin was 4.3% (11.2%).

Of course, I have to be fair, by the end of the article Symbian Freak did state more positive aspects of the figures and showed that Nokia is, in fact, doing well.

But the tone of the articles was set before most of the words are read, and that was done by the photos used. Both websites used similar images as the icons for their articles: a stock-esque arrow moving in either a positive or negative vertical direction as it moves forward in time. GSMArena uses a positive line shooting into the sky, immediately below the Nokia logo. Symbian Freak uses a negative line, falling to the ground, accented with a bar graph in the background showing the same statistics, and a depressed-looking stick figure at the location where the arrow meets the ground.

The main reason why I wanted to post this is just to point out that different websites, reviewers, writers, etc. can show different sides of the story, or even the same side from a different perspective. While that is not a surprise, what did catch me off guard was that I would have expected the two websites to be reversed.

-Nokia FanBoy