Thanks to the massive headache of Antennagate, Consumer Reports famously felt that it could not recommend the iPhone 4 to its readers… an approbation that, as we all know, tanked Apple stock, prompted Cupertino to dump unsold iPhones by the millions into an Arizona landfill and ultimately led to Apple’s enthusiastic embrace of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system.
I kid. As you know, none of that happened, and the iPhone 4 is the best selling iPhone yet. But I’m sure you’re wondering what Consumer Reports thinks of the Verizon iPhone 4, right?
Well, as it turns out, they like it, with Consumer Reports’ Mike Gikas claiming that “key technical differences” separates the Verizon iPhone from the AT&T iPhone.
Color me pretty shocked with this pronouncement, considering the fact that the Verizon iPhone suffers from many of the same attenuation issues as the AT&T iPhone. Charitably, the issue may simply be that Consumer Reports is willing to recommend the Verizon iPhone despite much of the same hardware design thanks to the strength of the Verizon network… but could it also be that, despite their principled stand on the matter earlier, after eight months Consumer Reports has decided that the so-called “death grip” isn’t really a big deal after all the page views have stopped flowing in?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “Consumer Reports: “Key Technical Differences” Make The Verizon iPhone A Winner”
Be sure to take Consumers Onion’s reports with a grain of salt. This “consumer” group once reported back in the 1980’s that ALL CD players were the same because they were all DIGITAL. The foil in their hats would cause more interference problems than their testers attempting to smother the iPhone 4 with their Man Hands.