Tuesday, December 28, 2010

CNN votes iPhone 4 tech fail of the year. The phone which has the highest customer satisfaction ranking from JD Power and Changewave

CNN has vote the iPhone 4 as number one on its list of 2010 tech failures.



 The others are:

2. 3D TV
3. Microsoft Kin
4. Nexus One
5. Facebook privacy
6. Google Buzz
7. Gawker media sites hacked
8. Content farms
9. Digg relaunch
10 iTunes Ping

This is what CNN says :


"Apple drama -- nothing brings out the diehard fans and Cupertino haters quite like this one.

The newest iteration of the wildly popular smartphone was released in June. By all standards, it's been a huge success. All standards except one. Some people couldn't actually use it for phone calls.OK, maybe that's an overstatement. But the Grip of Death (caused when users covered part of the antenna in a band around the phone's edge) was real -- and a big glitch in the device's rollout.

First Apple said the problem didn't exist. Then they said it was a software issue. Then they kind-of admitted it existed and gave away free cases to help. Then, they said it doesn't really exist anymore and stopped giving away the bumpers.

Months later, the problem is all but forgotten and the phones show no sign of dipping in popularity. So "fail," in this case, is a pretty relative term."

CNN has put the iPhone the largest selling (by far) smartphone on the planet  higher on its list than the Microsoft Kin which died in a few months after launch. The iPhone which has the highest customer satisfaction rankings from various agencies including JD Power and Changewave (this link has been edited, originally posted it linked it Changewave's 2009 poll) which actually asked the users instead of speculating from a desk. 

 Weird too that this phone which CNN says you can't make phone calls also has a return rate of 1.6% (what are those other 98.4% doing with their non functioning phones I wonder?).  

And it's strange that Telestra in Australia has awarded the iPhone 4 with it's 'blue tick' exlaining that "the handheld coverage performance is improved so that it is equivalent to one of our Telstra ‘Blue Tick’ devices. We award our Blue Tick to mobiles that have the best coverage performance and recommend them to customers working or living in regional and rural coverage areas." (To be fair Telestra does suggest people to use bumpers if they want to but still says the antenna design is improved so that can be recommended for rural areas giving "best coverage performance"). So how did this phone end up as CNN's biggest tech fail?