iPhone 3GS #1 in Consumer Reports New Smartphone Ratings
The latest piece of hardware to come out of Cupertino, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, has claimed the honor of being ranked number 1 in Consumer Reports new smartphone ratings. Now does this come as a surprise to anyone? In all actuality, it was pretty close within the top 8 devices: (Device/Overall Score):
- iPhone 3GS (16 GB) 73
- iPhone 3G (8 GB) 70
- Samsung Omnia 69
- BlackBerry Storm 69
- HTC G1 69
- BlackBerry Bold 69
- Samsung Epix 69
- Palm Pre 67
While the race to top honors was anything but a blow-out, the iPhone shined when it came to it’s 3.5-inch widescreen display, top of the line multimedia, ease of navigation, web browsing, and battery life. Devices like the Palm Pre, among others, beat out Apple’s gem when it came to messaging along with superior multitasking capabilities.
So the iPhone ranked number 1 this year as it did almost two years ago, congratulations goes out to Apple for a continuing job well done!
Update – We love our friends over at PreCentral.net so to be fair we wanted to let it be known the Palm Pre did not come in last place, we simply just cut the list off after the Pre. For the full list please visit the Consumer Reports site.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:34 am
Ohh boy here comes the pre hate why did you have to mention it?
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:07 am
With all the Pre talk, I’m surprised that it finished last.. Good job to apple for having the top two, when only being in the market for 3 years.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:16 am
I’m surprised that Pre was last, it opened to very little disappointment! But I guess the people who actually use it don’t like it as much as the gadget blogs do
iPhone is always on top of customer satisfaction. See, people argue about which phone is the ‘best’, and I think these surveys tell you, because it’s really about how satisfied you are with the device. You can’t deny these numbers.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 am
We all knew the iPhone pawns the Pre, why did we need numbers to tell us?
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:30 am
I get Consumer Reports monthly. One month they rated the Black Berry Storm a “CR Best Buy”. There other instances where they gave a product a good rating which I knew from experience wasn’t top tier.
Although I do believe the 3Gs is a top tier phone, I don’t put much stock into what Consumer Reports has to say about electronic gadgets, computers, etc.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
I can’t believe that they ranked the samsung omnia so high that phone is junk. I thought Verizon stopped selling it anyway cause of how bad it was
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:34 am
Just so everyone knows, I simply stopped at the Palm Pre. So please don’t think it was dead last. I will update to mention there were more than 8 devices on the list.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
I had posted them over at precentral but took em down. Never know if CR will have a fit. As a fan of both phones, i can only say they didn’t seem very consistent at all.
Example: Messaging on the Pre integrates IM and should easily earn a top mark. It didn’t. While the iphone is held up because AT&T hasn’t implemented MMS.
Example 2: “Voicing” received higher on the iphone 3GS vs the iphone 3G. Huh?
I’d still put the iphone 3GS on top (easily) if i were doing a similar rankings, but CR clearly needs to stick to rating appliances
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:53 am
I think this report is BS, since Blackberry Curve 8900 isn’t even in the list and there’s no way the Bold ranks higher than the Curve 8900.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
@VDR, the 8900 is on the complete list but to view it you have to go to Consumer Reports web site. As stated in the post we only listed the top 8 devices. And I’d take a Bold over the 8900 simply for 3G.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
@Jeremy, thanks for the tip, that explains why there are only 8 phones on the above list.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
@Smells Good:
I’ve always thought that CS was good at rating canned peas.
Anything technical, not so much.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Come on, Tipb, what are you – a bunch of kids? So you chopped the list of at the Pre without explaining this, then you act surprised when people assume it came in last. I’ve been seeing this kind of incompetence a bit on your site. Try to be more attentive than a 16 yr old.
And Consumer Reports? What do they really know about anything? My 3GS is far superior to my 3G. I appreciate it’s responsiveness and crashlessness (aka stability) more and more with each passing day. OS 3.1 just makes it even sweeter.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Ok, ok: ‘TiPb’ and ‘off’ were what i meant. Sorry if I offended.
BTW, why was the volume so low on your otherwise very nice Wed night podcast? And why can I not listen live on my iPhone? It just seems funny that a livecast stream about the iPhone can’t be listened to on the device itself. Or am I missing something here?
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Consumer Reports reviews are just as crappy as the CNET ones except with CR you have to pay to look at the reviews.
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
@Truth: I totally agree…..your name says it all.
@ice: You hit the nail on the head. CR isn’t even good for toilet paper. The pages are too glossy.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:25 am
@Waidt Maybe you should try reading the original post more closely before sounding off. I think Jeremy clearly said the list was of the “top 8 devices”.
Now, what was it you were saying about incompetency and 16 yr old inattentiveness?
July 4th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Funny how they are mostly touch screen devices near the top. I guess that’s the wave of the future.
July 4th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
At risk of getting ripped apart, I do believe the Pre is a better device than the iPhone. As one website stated, OSX left alot out of it, and WebOS filled in the gaps. Plus, WebOS is not locked down like OSX is by Apple. And, you don’t have to put up with at&t. I have used both devices, in case you are wondering. Pre > iPhone IMO.
July 5th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Haha. The Pre can’t even do half the things the iPhone can do so it surely didn’t fill in any gaps. Sprint is worse than At&t and I would have to say the Pre is actually more locked down since they have the ability to force software updates on you to remove things if they want. Not to mention you can’t do anything 3rd party with the Pre right now without getting into complex command-line. LMAO, get your facts straight.