This is a typical PDA / Smartphone product review found on Cnet.

But before I begin, let me first emphasize that this is not an attack on the quality of Cnet’s review because it has always been my opinion that Cnet’s editors do some of the most balanced and objective, if not the best, technical reviews that can be found on the Internet. Very often I recommend that my friends read them up, and I also read up a Cnet review before making my decision to purchase a particular electronic product – be it a digital camera, PDA, laptop or even a mobile phone.

Take a look at the example of the HTC Touch review given above. As with all Cnet reviews, it gives you an overview of the specifications of the product, the features available, the good and the bad and even showing you the quality of the pictures taken with the built-in camera. I have come across a review of the iPhone which even some of the known gripes and criticisms from those already using a product is mentioned. For e.g., I quote: “CNET users have also reported volume problems, and a few people we called said they heard a slight background hiss.”

Unfortunately, this is where my praises for Cnet’s reviews end, and with all due respect to the Cnet editors, this is no fault of yours.

I am quite sure many of us has bought a product after comparing the features and taking the one with the most features usable for us, and also on performance, but ultimately found the product unwieldy and hardly of use for the purpose we intended it for after purchase. (That is also why I have completely sworn myself off PDA smartphones, with the exception of the Blackberry. The reason was that this is the one product that best suit my uses in the corporate environment, given to me free by the company because I am one of the Blackberry Enterprise Server administrators.)

Anyway, what good is a review telling you how good the sound or the quality of the picture taken is, the range the WIFI built in etc when there are so many similar products out there with comparable features? When our decision making is solely based on comparing features and specifications, is that not the very reason we found ourselves in want – not in need – of an upgrade, or desiring a better phone in the near future? In the end we end up trying to chase the technology and because our current gadget was only the best – a has been – until the next one comes along.

So what is the point I am trying to make here? What I am doing here is presenting my uneducated view here on how a product review can be further improved. For e.g. it might help us if the review tells us how the HTC Touch can integrate with the work of users of a certain profile, and there’s a short video or a presentation featuring a real user showing us what he has done with it etc. And I don’t mean looking for fan boys to sing the praises of a product and try to convince us just why a pile of stinking iDung or the iFart from Steve Job’s ass maybe fragrant.

I mean, don’t we all at times discovered we wanted something because our friends flashes us their gadgets and tell us just what he can do with it and how cool that might be because that’s something we are looking for all along? And wouldn’t that save also help save us a lot of money because this will be one product that will serve our purpose and last us for a long time to come?

I thank Endoh for giving me the inspiration to this article. And to Chaosdingo: ‘this is the article I told you I wanted to write sometime back on WLM. It is finally here.’