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@Max

Yet again you seem unable to just focus on SE when we are talking about them what any other manufacturer does has nothing to do with SE's behaviour as again two wrongs don't make a right.

But just to makes things really clear the N95's problems were in no way as catastrophic as the P990 and the N95 received firmware much quicker that actually resolved the problems. Also the N95 still has support where as the P990's stopped within a year. That is what has pissed people off that not only did they not deliver what was promised or resolve many of the issues without introducing new ones. They actually had the audacity to claim with the last firmware from them all was fine whilst they managed to introduce 3 new bugs, i mean come on even you must admit that is absurd behaviour. Further more it took a huge protest to force SE to release a final firmware to fix those 3 bugs. Now worse than that is every UIQ device since and up to the W960 still carries over bugs from the previous models, so are SE inept incompetent or just plain stupid? or possible all three.

Marc

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Nokia E90,8GB SDHC, Fring, Tom Tom 6
Dogmanns Nokia E90 Blog @ http://dogmann.vox.com/
Honoured to have won BEST DEBATER

[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2008-03-21 14:58 ]
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Posted: 2008-03-21 15:58:26
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Well.. I want to agree with you. But if we're saying that: infrequent hangs. That the icons were not turning up properly (because of a bad solution with one of the background apps). Some program- hangs while having certain third- party applications installed. While some selections keep disappearing at irritating points in the programs throughout the UI. And that the wallpaper can't be animated - ..are all good reasons for a refund, even after the initial open period. Then we are making a tall demand.

So I'm just saying that unless we can find reproduceable problems with the phone, and highlight those - then we're reduced to.. er.. complaining for no reason. Some think that kind of noise is good for discouraging buyers, and ferrying them over to another brand. And some think it's extremely satisfying to spend countless hours on doing that, believing that actually demanding real improvements on the units is futile, so we really should just convince ourselves to be happy with buying more crap, or something similar.

But you just won't find a perfect unit on the market now, so assuming there might be is ridiculous.

Still - that's obviously no reason to buy something you're not happy with, or something that disappoints you, or doesn't do the tasks you expect of it. So again - we will have to limit ourselves to clearly documentable faults. Which I also think we should since there are a few simple things SE could do with the software (profiles, customisability, device locks, backlight, etc., contact- management), with customer relations (answering one goddamn question properly, and documenting functionality in detail when it comes to standards, etc), and with including customer concerns to some extent when working on the UI solutions. On the existing units, as well as the next few units - in order to increase their usability and market appeal by orders of magnitude.

And we can - if we have been honest and objective enough with our complaining, be able to suggest substantive improvements... or something more likely to cause reaction: for example compare with that when the g- series comes out, and show exactly how little is done.

And I won't lie and say I'm not doing this for the same reason as you - that I want revenge on SE for dismissing even the simplest requests for certain fixes. Obviously, I feel completely mystified about why SE insists on not exploring a few improvements on their UI implementation (from connectivity with vpn and proxy, to how numbers are displayed in the phone- application). As I've said, I write things on the wiki instead of sending letter- bombs .

But I seriously think that documenting all of this properly is the only productive way to force SE to react. Or failing that - that this is the only convincing way to show in what ways SE is failing to make a good product. To, I hope, their cost as a company, and to the benefit of other smartphone- customers.

I mean - honestly - how many know exactly what they are buying when picking up a phone? Specially when it comes to smartphones? The truth is that we're going on assumptions and soundbites. And whether or not SE is deliberately speculating on that when neglecting any of the problems with their UIQ3 implementation.. Or whether they genuinely think there are no faults that need to be addressed, because they don't have any kind of system to handle customer concerns.. Regardless of that - I think we should just document the problems and concerns. And try not to skew the standard too much in the process.

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[ This Message was edited by: Nipsen on 2008-03-21 17:57 ]
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Posted: 2008-03-21 18:54:26
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I was thinking Opera plugins and animated wallpapers. They are in the specifications but are not implemented. There is also the issue of RDS which doesn't work properly. All you need to do is put the P990 next to a K750 and see the difference, the K750 RDS works and the P990 RDS doesn't. I do not actually have any of the other potential problems. I'm not even mentioning the extremely low volume when using stereo BT headphones, my complaints are those that could have been fixed by fw.
If you read all my past posts (I'm not suggesting you do but people have a general idea on what I have written) you'll see that up to SE's announcement of no further fw support, I always tried to point out the problems in order to help SE fix the problems. I only became vindictive after SE made it clear that there will be no more fw improvements.
I'm not defending any other brand, my current experience is with SE and my only reference to other brands is to show SE what the competition is doing right. Please understand that I've been a P series user since P800 and have used a P900 for over 4 years now, it wasn't easy to turn me away from SE, that is what they have succeeded in doing.

[ This Message was edited by: makbil on 2008-03-21 20:52 ]
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Posted: 2008-03-21 21:32:23
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Which took SE all of half an hour to fix actually, just copy/paste stuff and wait a full month for release... God forbid, if they released early people might have started having expectations for further fw development...
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Posted: 2008-03-21 21:36:00
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Well, that it took them well over a year to figure out something had to be done to get rid of various stability problems, that is serious - specially on a smartphone, I agree with that. And when SE managed to fix a few of the bugs that were there.. most likely from the beginning, on the m600 and the p990 - when they turned up on the p1 as well.. That's of course not exactly heaping praise on top of the SE testing department (if it exists).

But you see my problem - the "icon bug", the selections, some of the folders in the message- app, the "move to external folders", etc. Those were fixed (the folders not extremely well done, and there are a few views around the phone that still don't save the selections, and so on) in the p1 firmware. A problem with the e-mail client when writing longer messages were fixed very quickly after I put it in the wiki. And I don't know who to thank for that on SE, but those were all logical problems with the code - and they must've been there since the first UIQ3 builds.

So I mean, I can point out that if SE had had any customer- relations that was worth anything, and tested their UIQ3 units properly (or even just for a short while) - they would've figured out all of these problems literally years ago.

But I can't fault them for actually fixing some of the serious problems when they are told they exist. And it's not like I managed to gather hundreds of signatures on the wiki, before something happened, you know..

Of course - obviously this shows how inefficient SE's bug- fixing is. And that they don't have any kind of plan with how they're addressing them. They could've had a common UIQ3 functionality- testing, for example, and then separate (and shorter) testing for the individual units - and instead they've apparently chosen to drop all the earlier units - even though the fixes don't involve needing gigaquads of ram.. And basically denying the p990 exists at this point - that's not a good way to deal with the problems, which obviously spells doom for the next UIQ3 series phones as well.

But you know - the only way to show that is to document the issues. And I can't help but think that animated wall- papers, and opera plugins (that were eventually never made by opera for any platform) don't really qualify as tricking the customer. RDS - well, that's at least a functionality point they should have a really good explanation for, if it said there should be rds on the specifications. But... you see my problem with the entire "SE is a bad company because I don't have animated wallpapers" stick?
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Posted: 2008-03-22 10:52:47
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@Nipsen, I think we have both made our views clear and I tend to agree with most of what you say. Just a few points: when I talked with the local SE support about the RDS problem, I was told that SE knew the problem and had tried to correct it but couldn't do it on the Symbian platform !! As to why they can get it to work on Java based phones and not on Symbian based ones, he had no comment
(Let me explain what the specific problem is: if the particular FM station broadcasts RDS information, the name of the song and the artist continuously scroll on the screen, on the P990 at best the info shows up only once and seems stuck at the end or some random parts of the broadcast text shows).
If you now look at P990 specs on SE web sites, you will see that the RDS option for P990 is no longer listed!

My examples about the Opera plugins and the animated wallpaper are simply legal arguments, in fact I don't even use them. However, we know that SE will just look at this case from a legal point of view not from a customer satisfaction point.
Isn't it ironic that a lot of problems could have been avoided just by better customer relations?
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Posted: 2008-03-22 14:19:06
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having decided for whatever reason that rds is not fixable, this would seem the responsible thing to do. I know that doesn't help existing customers, but atleast it's more accurate info for new customers.

It also indicates that there was no intention to deceive initially and that the inability to provide reliable RDS was a genuine mistake.

Legally, making a mistaken claim is not unlawful providing it is retracted once it's discovered that the claim is untrue. Knowingly making a deceptive claim is unlawful though.

I think it would be hard to prove SE have at any point knowingly made any false claims. I tend to agree with Nipsen that they just have a really crap testing methodology and poor customer service.

It comes back to what I've said before, surely if the phone wasn't working as intended (not animated wallpaper, but restarts during call certainly qualifies), and firmware fixes weren't forthcoming within a month or two of purchase, if you haven't demanded your money back aren't you sort of accepting it?

Most consumer law provides for products to be repaired within the warranty period, and if this can not be done for the purchaser to be refunded the full purchase cost. Personally I would have demanded my money back in the first few months. I've done such things before with sub par products and have never failed to get my money back (though I've had to fight for it usually).

I got replaced a netgear router that wouldn't stay connected for more than 10 minutes at a time before needing restart, a Compaq laptop with dead pixels (despite only having 3 dead pixels and Compaq having a "policy" of only replacing units with 5 dead pixels or more), a belkin bt adapter that worked intermittantly and quite a few other things I can't remember off hand. I've also got my money back on devices that work properly but not as advertised (because they were mistakenly advertised as being able to do certain things that they couldn't).


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Posted: 2008-03-22 16:24:10
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but you guys keep refering to Nokia to elucidate us as to why SE is so wrong! Don't you see that is what I keep reacting to? If you want me to focus on SE, then don't bring Nokia into it. Look back in the thread, I think you will find Makbil was the one who started the Nokia comparisons.

Anyway, I agree with you guys SE have performed abysmally. I don't agree that they are unethical though, that's too strong. You can argue all you like but I don't accept that words or phrases such as "vengence", "evil", "unethical", "stole my money" as have been used in this thread are either constructive or a true reflection of the situation.

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[ This Message was edited by: max_wedge on 2008-03-22 15:37 ]
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Posted: 2008-03-22 16:35:15
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I don't agree. The responsible thing is to get that feature to work even at the expense of dedicating some programming time. If SE is not technically capable of fixing this, then that indeed is very bad news for SE.

You just can't change the rules once the game has started. Following this line of logic, published specifications will mean absolutely nothing. It sounds like genuine incompetency to me.

Yes and for a period of two years (in Europe) the consumers have the right for a full refund once that happens. You can't just advertise and sell a product claiming certain features and then say "sorry" and retract those features.

With that I'll have to agree SE didn't know anything about the P990 when they started selling it. I doubt their QC department even switched one on...

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P990i: A mistake, a curse and a disgrace

[ This Message was edited by: makbil on 2008-03-22 19:59 ]
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Posted: 2008-03-22 20:56:11
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@Max


I only respond to what you claim about the Nokia and the N95 i have never said look at Nokia aren't they perfect but i do correct you on the terrible state you seem to believe the N95 is in. As you constantly try and tell us the P990 is no worse which frankly is just absurd, as for SE removing features it can't make work logic dictates that you would have something working and tested before claiming this is what your device will do.

Remember SE said the P990 will be like taking your computer with you, well maybe if it was an early build Windows 95 machine as it was just replacing the blue screen of death with "Your device has restarted to improve performance" rubbish.

Now you would of thought that SE really would of learnt from the P990 experience to really bug test their devices before releasing them to the public, so how did they managed to launch both the P1 and W960 still with known bugs from previous devices is truly a screw up of unbelievable magnitude.

Really is it any wonder so many have now moved to a different manufacturer for their device and why peoples faith and confidence in SE is so low as you just can't even trust they will support the product for even year if they feel they can't do any more or want you to buy a new device. So to many of us the recent announcement of SE's dropping profits comes as no big surprise and it will be interesting to see if it is just s blip and how well the new UIQ devices are picked up.

As if the Networks don't show interest as in the P1 it will be yet more bad news for SE and i don't think a lot of Networks that have there own versions of HTC devices will pick the X1 either in direct competition to there own branded units. Which will mean most will have to be bought Sim Free which will rule out most the Corporate Market they are so keen to target as they tend to get their devices free with their contracts.

Marc

_________________
Nokia E90,8GB SDHC, Fring, Tom Tom 6
Dogmanns Nokia E90 Blog @ http://dogmann.vox.com/
Honoured to have won BEST DEBATER

[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2008-03-22 19:59 ]
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Posted: 2008-03-22 20:57:17
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