As if to cement their total irrelevance, with millions upon millions of iPhone 4s flying of store shelves worldwide, “Consumer Reports is now warning users to wait, calling it ‘middle aged’ and doubting whether Verizon will offer the unlimited data contracts it is said it would,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider who notes that Consumer Reports awarded “Apple’s iPhone 4 its highest ratings across the board last summer.”
“In a blog posting, Paul Reynolds and Mike Gikas write that the Verizon iPhone 4 is ‘promising, but likely to be short-lived,’ saying that ‘it may be quickly replaced by a newer, cooler version more quickly than is customary even for the die-young life expectancy of most smart phones,'” Dilger reports. “Other smartphone makers release new models every few months, with Motorola, for example, releasing the Droid X just months after its original Droid launched, then following up with the Droid Pro and Droid 2 models within another six months. Consumer Reports does not warn users not to buy Motorola’s Droid phones because a new model will be released within six months, making its warnings about Verizon’s iPhone 4 seem inconsistent.”
MacDailyNews Take: There is no doubt, Consumer Reports doesn’t just “seem” inconsistent, they are inconsistent.
Dilger continues, “The blog posting also criticized Verizon’s iPhone 4 offering as being 3G ‘at a time when carriers—Verizon among them—have launched faster 4G networks and phones that work on them.’ However, while Verizon began rolling out its new ‘4G’ LTE data network in December, it doesn’t over widespread coverage and isn’t yet usable for voice calls.”
“Additionally, the 4G phones Verizon showed at CES earlier this month aren’t yet available and won’t be ‘launched’ until the middle of 2011. If Consumer Reports is worried about iPhone 4 being refreshed, it should also be warning all Verizon users to hold off buying phones because of the new batch of LTE models being offered within six months,” Dilger reports. “If it starts doing that, it can continue to warn users to never buy a new smartphone because Motorola, Samsung and HTC will continue to release new and improved models every few months.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Consumer Reports has no credibility (see related articles below). We wouldn’t recommend the rag to a grandma looking for a new vacuum cleaner, much less to a smartphone buyer.
