how i test a device before i review it: one phone, one week, one spreadsheet

product · 2025-09-22 · 6 min

i do not trust review scores, and i do not trust my own impressions after an hour with a device. so i built a test that runs for one phone, one week, against a spreadsheet i wrote beforehand. the spreadsheet lists the exact things i check, in the exact order, so a device earns a verdict instead of receiving one based on first impressions or spec-sheet appeal.

the spreadsheet

the spreadsheet has four sections. daily use: the things i do every day on a phone and how the device handles them. battery: how long the device lasts under real use, not under a synthetic test. camera: whether the camera is good enough for the photos i actually take, not for the sample images in the marketing. faults: the things that go wrong, annoy me, or make me work around the device instead of with it.

each section has specific items. daily use: unlock speed, app launch, messaging, browsing, map turn-by-turn, music, notifications, alarms. battery: morning to evening with real use, heavy use day, standby behavior. camera: indoor, outdoor, low light, document capture, quick snap versus deliberate shot. faults: things that broke, lagged, confused me, or made me do the same action twice.

the point of the spreadsheet is not to produce a score. it is to produce a record. after a week i can look at the record and say what the device is good at, what it is bad at, and what i would notice only after living with it — which is the category that most reviews miss.

why one week

one week is long enough to learn the device's real behavior and short enough to actually do. anything shorter and i am testing first impressions. anything longer and i am testing whether i can live with the device, which is a different question.

the first few days are the device showing me its good behavior, because the good behavior is what the device is designed to show. the last few days are the device showing me its bad behavior, because the bad behavior is what shows up only after the novelty wears off.

what changed when i started doing this

i stopped writing reviews that sounded like spec-sheet comparisons and started writing reviews that sounded like what a real user would notice. the camera score went from "12 megapixels, good low light" to "i take documents with this phone more than i take photos, and the document mode is the only camera feature i care about." the battery score went from "4800 milliamp-hours, all-day battery" to "i charge this phone at 6pm on a normal day and at 2pm on a heavy day."

the spreadsheet did not make me a better reviewer. it made me a more honest one.

for the larger method behind this: testing products like a user.