Everyone has an opinion about which smartphone is the best one on the market. It usually boils down to a mixture of brand familiarity, personal experience with a handset and/or wireless carrier, functionality preferences, and sometimes a particularly bad experience with one or more of the above. No matter what your favorite is or why, Consumer Reports says the best smartphone available right now is the iPhone 3GS.
Every year, Consumer Reports produces several best-of lists, one of which is a list of the best smartphones. They take several things into account when compiling the list such as phone size, camera availability and megapixels, whether it has a touchscreen, that touchscreen’s sensitivity, and several other factors that contribute to the value of any smartphone. And by the way, Consumer Reports conducts all its product tests independently. In other words, they accept no advertising for their publications, so they’re not swayed by any big business contributers.
While they gave high marks to the Palm Pre and several BlackBerry models, they named the iPhone the best bet for its “superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life.” This may be welcome news to current iPhone owners who have complained, repeatedly and loudly, about the iPhone’s dearth of battery life. Maybe Apple has come through on its promise of improvement.
One area where the Pre really shone, though, was as a “superior multitasker” because of its ability to have multiple applications open at once, an area where the iPhone is still lacking. In fact, one issue that has already come to light about AT&T Navigator for the iPhone is that if you answer a call while using the application, it closes, leaving you directionless for the duration of the call. You can reopen the app and resume your route, but this isn’t advisable while you’re driving. Being able to switch seamlessly from app to phone to app would alleviate problems like this, but Apple has made no mention of multiple app function being available anytime soon.
Other phones that have placed high on the list in previous years dropped down in ranking, not because they’ve changed or gotten worse, but because Consumer Reports changed how they rank the phones. Things like talk time and voice quality have taken a back seat to more coveted smartphone features like the display, multimedia, messaging, and navigation.
Although it was at the top of the list, the iPhone may have ranked better had MMS messaging been available at the time of compilation. AT&T is still saying that capability, along with tethering, will be available later this summer, but no specific date has been announced.
The full Consumer Reports smartphone list is available to subscribers.
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