Tomato Net, as scheduled, announced the launch of its second rating category, the mobile phone category.
Upon its establishment, this category was incredibly comprehensive, including not only phone ratings but also various mobile phone reviews. This undertaking, which would only gradually emerge years later, was brought to the online world early by Tomato Net.
Simultaneously, Tomato Net announced the launch of a public rating feature, meaning an item would have two distinct rating systems. One was a professional rating, a leaderboard compiled by a select group of professional individuals.
The other was a public leaderboard, where anyone with a registered Tomato Net account could directly rate anything they were interested in. At the same time, Tomato Net announced strategic partnerships with Weibo and Facebook, with both major social networking sites in China and the United States directly referencing Tomato Net's data.
Moreover, when searching for a work or item listed on Tomato Net via Weibo or Facebook, a "Tomato Rating: xx" display icon would appear on the page.
With the traffic boost from the two largest social networking sites globally, Tomato Net was destined to become the world's largest rating website.
Therefore, when the mobile phone section was launched, many users couldn't resist checking out what new features and information this brand-new functional section had to offer.
The result, while not spectacularly amazing, was indeed very rich in various kinds of information. The homepage featured recommendations for all sorts of mobile phone-related articles, but what undoubtedly attracted the most attention was the official mobile phone review section launched by the website.
According to the promotional slogan for this section, the website would review a mobile phone currently on sale in the market every week and then release an official review report. Lacking any prior concept of "review," everyone was very curious about what this was all about, and thus they clicked on the section.
The very first sentence was a warm reminder: "This review is conducted on a mobile phone randomly purchased through market channels during its sales period. We do not accept any fees from mobile phone manufacturers during this process, solely for the purpose of providing you with the most authentic mobile phone quality investigation."
The first half of this review was highly professional, beginning with various photo displays comprehensively showcasing the phone's exterior, followed by the statement, "Whether the phone looks good is up to you; we do not conduct any subjective evaluations."
Next, it listed the phone's various official configurations, then directly attached a photo of the phone being disassembled, conducting the most intuitive inspection and listing the models of the actual components used.
The conclusion was that one-third of the components in this phone did not match the specifications and that cheaper components were used instead.
For instance, the screen's actual pixel count was about a quarter lower than the advertised pixel count, and similarly for the application memory, camera, and so on. One-third of them had reduced standards.
Aside from this part, which was quite technical and might only be understood by ordinary people for its conclusion, with the entire argumentation process being incomprehensible,
the subsequent reviews were much easier to understand. For example, it tested how long the phone could maintain a call while continuously in use from full charge until automatic shutdown.
It also tested battery life by keeping the phone in standby mode from full charge until automatic shutdown, to see how long the battery could last.
There were also tests on the camera's sensitivity in extremely dark conditions, the actual pixels the camera could capture, and even bringing the phone to different environments to use phone cards from various companies to check signal strength.
There was also the drop test, an activity that originated from the public entertainment nature of the Tianxing 5 phone, which surprisingly became a standard review item here, to see from which floor it would be completely damaged and unusable.
And this phone's performance was the second floor; yes, this phone was destroyed after just two floors.
The final segment was the game testing section, which involved testing whether this phone could perfectly run various Atari games. The conclusion was that this phone could not install the 00 game hall, and therefore could not play games at all.
At the end of the article, there was also an editor's note and a link for video download.
However, it was estimated that very few people would be willing to download and watch this video because its size reached an astonishing 10.1 GB, with a total duration of 236 hours, which is nearly 10 days.
As this video was recorded continuously, the beginning of the video showed the program's staff purchasing a Motorola Razr phone from a mobile phone counter. From this point on, the video never cut, including the staff leaving after purchasing the phone, arriving at the laboratory, and then conducting various tests on the phone.
During this time, the camera was fixed on the phone, never allowing the purchased phone to leave the camera's screen until the testing was completed.
Therefore, as long as the integrity of this video was verified and it was confirmed that it had not been edited, the absolute authenticity and lack of tampering in the entire testing process could be guaranteed. This provided the best self-evident proof, causing the manufacturer of this phone to immediately lose interest in suing for defamation. With this video, it would be impossible to win a lawsuit.
Oh, and you must be curious about which mobile phone endured all this torment. The phone that underwent all these tests was the latest Motorola Razr phone, the hottest-selling phone on the market.
It's hard to imagine that a phone selling 200,000 units a month could have so many incredible problems. If the drop test was merely a humorous experiment that could not be trusted,
then the genuine issue of component misrepresentation that was exposed was indeed real.
As soon as this review was released, the media found another news hotspot. The entire internet began to repost it frantically, and then the network collectively mocked Motorola, which is not worth mentioning.
Besides the mobile phone review column that was updated once a week, this website also had an even more attractive column: the mobile phone ranking.
That's right, Tomato Net directly created a mobile phone ranking section, and not just one, but five different mobile phone rankings were released simultaneously.
The first was the professional mobile phone rating ranking, where professionals rated mobile phones. Hilariously, the Motorola Razr phone, which had just undergone the review, was currently at the top of the list with a total score of 8.10 points.
Following it were Nokia and then Samsung. The top 10 positions on the leaderboard were mostly occupied by these 10 phones, with Tianxing 5 awkwardly at the 11th position with a total score of 7.25 points.
Next was the public mobile phone rating ranking. The top spot on this leaderboard was directly taken by Tianxing 5, which was previously ranked 11th, with an astonishing user rating of 9.13 points. The Razr phone, which was previously ranked first, had a mere 6.21 points, dropping out of the top thirty.
In addition to the two comprehensive mobile phone rating rankings mentioned above, there was also a mobile phone appearance ranking, which was entirely rated by the public, without any professional input.
There was also a mobile phone benchmark score ranking. As "benchmark score" was a new term, the official website provided a special explanation, stating that they had established detailed scoring criteria with over 270 different scoring items. Each scoring item would be graded, and a total score would be given for ranking.
Here, Tianxing 5 was again ranked first with a total score of 1897 points, opening a gap of 987 points with the second-place phone, surpassing it by a factor of two, making all the phones below tremble.
Finally, there were the mobile phone sales rankings, which were divided into historical sales rankings and recent quarter sales rankings.
On this leaderboard, the Motorola Razr phone, with a sales volume of 650,000 units in March, was still ranked first. However, this did not mean Motorola had won, as the second to fifth positions were all occupied by Motorola.
The sixth position was the Tianxing 5 phone, with monthly sales of 100,000 units.
If such a website had been launched in 2020, it would undoubtedly be a favorite among many users with extremely high traffic. However, in 2004, due to the relatively small number of mobile phone users, the overall traffic for this section was still not high, and it could not be compared with other websites.
Nevertheless, Tomato Net's mobile phone section had a significant influence. The review of the currently hottest Razr phone, which was previously released, was widely reposted by numerous media outlets, sparking a new social discussion and consequently making this newly established website section incredibly popular.
After this, many users who were purchasing mobile phones liked to browse Tomato Net to gain more information for their choices.
As time went on, Tomato Net launched more and more channels, such as computers, home appliances, automobiles, and so on, and eventually even political party reviews were included.
That's right, major political parties in the United States all became rating and review subjects for Tomato Net.
Consequently, users generally held a positive attitude towards the website. In fact, within a month, Tomato Net's registered users exceeded 2.5 million, with over 500,000 users logging in daily to browse related information on Tomato Net for their decision-making.
Of course, some people were very unhappy, such as the mobile phone industry and Motorola. At a recent World Mobile Congress, Motorola's president, Edward Zamp, publicly stated at the conference that Tianxing 5 was a tumor and a robber in the mobile phone industry, which would ruin the entire industry and must be eliminated.