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There are plenty of people excited about Verizon and Apple teaming up to offer the iPhone 4, including a good number of AT&T subscribers eager to join the "Can You Hear Me Now?" network. But should they be?
Consumer Reports doesn't think so. The outfit called Verizon's CDMA iPhone 4 a "middle-aged device" and said buyers would be wise to wait for a newer model.
"The Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 has plenty in its favor, especially compared with its AT&T sibling," Consumer Reports explains in a blog post. "But it may be quickly replaced by a newer, cooler version more quickly than is customary even for the die-young life expectancy of most smartphones."
The question is how long Verizon customers will want to wait. According to Consumer Reports, Apple is likely to ship a new iPhone model in June or July, as has previously been the case, so this "middle-aged" device boils down to "a transitional phone to tide Verizon through until the Summer."
Read all of what Consumer Reports had to say right here.
Comments are closed on this article
Ecommerce Developer
January 19, 2011 at 5:15am
I have read more information about verizon in wikileaks ,..i believe that wiki leaks will be correct,.some what accurate atleast,..that is a good news that i-phone-4 is going to release with the combination of apple,...
mrrellim
January 18, 2011 at 4:05pm
Man what a bunch of Apple haters.
I use PC's and work and I love them for gaming. But as far as having a good reliable machine for shcool work give me something built by Apple any day.
EchoFive
January 18, 2011 at 11:24am
The only thing apple is good at is marketing, what other company can sell you overpriced propreitary crap and get away with it?
jgrimoldy
January 18, 2011 at 1:22pm
Much as I despise Apple and (more so) the Jobsian culture, I gotta disagree with this. Apple doesn't make crappy products. Their computers and other products are rock-solid. They're not "crap" at the level of Coby, Symphonic, Emerson, Goldstar, Realistic, etc. They are overpriced, but this world is filled with overpriced products (Killer NIC ring a bell?).
Yeah, they're proprietary. So what? Almost every laptop (PC or Mac) is proprietary in its construction. Yes, it's ridiculous that you can't easily pull and replace the battery on an iPad or an iPod. However, it's not like you can put a Toshiba battery into a Sony laptop. You can't replace the dead LCD panel on a Lenovo with one from an HP. Same thing with optical drives.
The most troubling thing that Apple does is generate far too much blind faith in their products. The notion that Apple can do no wrong (Pippin? Newton? Lisa? Bueller? Bueller?).
aviaggio
January 18, 2011 at 2:02pm
Apple products aren't crappy. But they are mediocre at best. There is never anything revolutionary in their hardware. It's well polished, but on the inside it's nothing better than middle of the road. Which only makes their ridiculous prices even more of an effrontery. You are clearly paying for the name and design.
And while you can't put a Sony battery into a Lenovo, at least you can change it when it dies. And you also have a bevy of industry-standard ports available to you. Neither of which you'll ever find in an Apple product. So it's not necessarily about it being proprietary, it's about it being so proprietary that it's compatible with NOTHING but itself, and goes out of its way to ensure their owner can't even do simple part exchanges or upgrades.
Look at it this way -- what if we were talking about cars instead of computers? Imagine a car that was essentially equivalent to a $15k Honda Civic, but sold for 3x the price because of its "aesthetics". Then imagine that there was no way for the owner to raise the hood or change the tires -- both of which requires a dealer-only service call. And forget about using a regular gas station, as the gas tank has a proprietary opening that only accepts nozzles licensed by them, with the prices at these specialty pumps costing significantly more than regular gas. Routine maintenance? Sorry, dealer only. Repairs? Yup, dealer only. And while the sound system is decent, it too has a proprietary connector for mobile devices and won't read regular CDs (yup, you guessed it, both of which available for purchase only from the dealer). Hell, even the radio is proprietary, only allowing you to access their own private radio stations, most of which requiring a subscription fee.
Would you want to buy one of these cars? Can you think of anyone you know that would want one? What if it had a big fat Apple logo on the hood and tail, would you then want it?
jgrimoldy
January 18, 2011 at 4:08pm
Aviaggio,
Your 2nd paragraph absolutely nails it! Again, I despise Apple. However, I will give them their due. The iPhone 4 is absolutely beautiful. I refuse to own one, but, damn(!) that screen is really niiiice. iTunes and the App Store are certainly not revolutionary, but they are pretty well implemented and very firmly entrenched. (i use neither)
I agree with you on the car analogy. Except it goes even further than that. On top of what you said, Apple and the fanboys are eletist, condescending, and smug. In addition, the company is so damned profitable. 'Just really galls ya. They have become what they parodied in their 1984 Superbowl spot.
jgrimoldy
January 18, 2011 at 11:22am
The Consumer Reports "review" seemed to be pretty straight forward and unbiased. It wasn't even really a review; it was a blog posting. It mostly concentrated on the iPhone 4 on Verizon, and what to expect, service-wise. The scope of the posting was not an evaluation of the capabilities of the device, itself. CR did not have really good things to say.
Man, oh man, the Apple Fanboys went nuts in the comments. Heaven forbid if an impartial reviewer say somthing less than stellar about a Apple product...
aviaggio
January 18, 2011 at 10:51am
NOOOOOO!!! Apple demands you buy BOTH! The iPhone 4 now and the iPhone 5 in six months. Geez, doesn't Consumer Reports know anything about the Jobsian Empire?
