AllThingsD » Consumer Reports

First Profit + Top Score From Consumer Reports = Tesla Stock Surge

Liz Gannes — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:36:19 +0000

Shares of Tesla jumped this morning, driven by yesterday’s earnings and today’s glowing review from Consumer Reports.

The electric-auto maker’s stock is at $66.81, or up about 20 percent, after opening up even higher.

Yesterday, Tesla posted its first quarterly profit: $11 million on revenue of $562 million. That was earnings per share of 12 cents, when analysts had expected 4 cents per share.

Today, Consumer Reports gave the car a 99 out of 100 rating, equalling its highest score ever.

The trusted reviewer wrote:

“There, we said it. The Tesla Model S outscores every other car in our test Ratings. It does so even though it’s an electric car. In fact, it does so because it is electric …

“So is the Tesla Model S the best car ever? We wrestled with that question long and hard. It comes close. And if your needs are confined to the Tesla’s driving range, it just may be.”

Tesla is also heading in the right direction to hit promised margins by the end of the year. Yesterday’s earnings showed total gross margins of 17 percent, up from 8 percent. The company said it was aiming for 25 percent by the end of the year.

However, the company recently reformulated a promised resale guarantee for its Model S car that had used some funny math.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be speaking at our D11 conference later this month.

Consumer Reports Survey Again Reveals That It Won't Be on AT&T's Christmas Card List

Ina Fried — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:00:36 +0000

Consumer Reports is out with its ratings of cellphone service providers and once again AT&T finds itself at the bottom of the pack while Verizon ranked highest among the big four national carriers.

That’s the same overall conclusion the magazine has been coming to for a while now.

That said, there was some good news for AT&T this year as its high-speed 4G LTE network got the highest marks in the survey, above rival Verizon Wireless whose network has been around longer and covers more places.

Verizon, though, had the top overall score when including voice and data service quality as well as customer-support marks.

Consumer Reports also pointed out that customers looking to save money can often do better by going with a prepaid carrier, even when factoring in the fact people have to pay more initially for their device. Two-thirds of prepaid carrier customers surveyed said they were saving $20 or more each month.

“Some smaller carriers that scored respectably in our Ratings and offer low-priced plans, such as Straight Talk and Virgin Mobile, now offer fairly sophisticated smart phones,” Consumer Reports electronics editor Paul Reynolds said in a statement. “And you can even save by switching a phone from a major carrier that’s coming off contract to a prepaid plan.”

Consumer Reports: T-Mobile Fudged Camera Specs on New Smartphones

Lauren Goode — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:09:51 +0000

A new report from Consumer Reports says T-Mobile hasn’t presented a clear picture when it comes to taking photos with the myTouch and myTouch Q.

The $50 “budget” smartphones, the latest in T-Mobile’s line of carrier-exclusive devices, hit the market earlier this month and offered some features on par with higher-end smartphones. As I wrote in my review of the phones, “the Huawei-made myTouch and myTouch Q … run 1.4GHz single-core processors, have five-megapixel rear-facing cameras, offer good call quality and are equipped with a Nuance-powered voice-command feature,” though I noted that the outdated Android Gingerbread OS might be a drawback for new smartphone shoppers.

But Consumer Reports is shooting down the idea that the cameras actually shoot five-megapixel photos. A blog post published earlier today reads, “According to Consumer Reports engineers, the phones’ rear-facing main camera, supposedly offering 5 megapixels, actually offers a maximum resolution of 3.9 megapixels. The problem showed up on multiple shots taken on several samples of both phones, all with software we ensured was up to date.”

The problem, Consumer Reports continued, stems not from the camera capabilities, but from the fact that the two phones automatically crop images to accomodate a widescreen 16×9 frame. In lopping off some of the pixels, it lowers the resolution of photos, resulting in “wide images that were only fair in image quality.”

Update: T-Mobile says Huawei and T-Mobile are aware of this issue and will be working on a software fix so that the myTouch and myTouch Q cameras can live up to the five-megapixel potential. For now, the Web page for the myTouch still claims a five-megapixel camera.

Decide.com Now Recommending When to Buy and What to Buy

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:00:11 +0000

Decide.com, which tells consumers whether the price of products will rise or fall, is now also helping consumers decide what products to buy.

The new feature, called Decide Score, analyzes ratings and reviews from across the Web, to provide a score on a scale from 1 to 100 for a variety of products, from consumer electronics to vacuums to outdoor grills.

Think of it as Consumer Reports, except that that the results are driven by data and not people.

“We are stripping out the bias to return a subjective data-driven score,” said Mike Fridgen, CEO of Decide.com. “More and more people are going directly to Amazon to begin their search, but the problem is, they don’t give you a clear idea what the best products are.”

To get the scores, the company sifts through more than 200 terabytes of data, including two million user reviews from online retailers, such as Amazon and Best Buy, as well as 7,000 professional opinions from online reviewers. The service launches in beta today for more than 22,000 consumer electronics and appliances across 16 categories.

The technology that goes into the product was built by the Seattle-based company, which is the brainchild of the folks behind Farecast.com, which helped predict whether it was the right time to buy an airline ticket, or if a price drop was coming. Farecast was purchased by Microsoft three years ago for $115 million, and is now Bing Travel.

In a demonstration, Fridgen showed me how a TV set on Amazon can have great reviews, but only gets an average review on Decide. From there, Decide recommends other TVs that have better scores and are cheaper. The problem with Amazon is that “it’s one source, and it’s only user reviews, which doesn’t tell the whole story,” he said. “We’re looking at experts and user reviews. There’s all types of bias in sources, and Amazon regularly has higher scores.”

However, getting consumers to change their behavior from starting their shopping experience on Amazon to starting their search on Decide will be a difficult one. ”No doubt about it, that will be a challenge for us,” he said.

When consumers do go to Decide first, Fridgen said that people follow its recommendations and are three times more likely to click through and purchase. Third parties that are using Decide’s content, like Bizrate.com, are seeing positive metrics, as well.

Right now, the company makes money from affiliate fees when people click through and make a purchase, but Fridgen says they’ve been more focused on making a good product. Over the past year, Decide has made more than seven million recommendations, and has saved consumers $75 million. Its mobile app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Consumer Reports Joins the Netflix Pile-On

Peter Kafka — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:00:08 +0000

Yesterday, Reed Hastings saw a quarter of his company’s stock value disappear. Today’s insult to injury: A dis from Consumer Reports.

A new survey from the magazine places the Netflix streaming service sixth in user satisfaction, behind, well, just about everybody: Walmart’s Vudu, Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Instant and Prime offerings, and Hulu. The big ding against Netflix: It doesn’t have a selection of stuff people want to see.

Anyone who follows digital video will see the obvious asterisk that should come with the ranking: It compares apples and oranges.

Netflix is a subscription video-on-demand service, which means it gets a much smaller selection of titles (particularly movies), than a la carte rental services like Vudu and iTunes. It’s like complaining that the Endless Shrimp special at Red Lobster doesn’t include snow crab legs. Different things, different economics, different prices.

But most people don’t follow digital video — they just want to watch stuff. And carping about selection is not a new critique — it’s the one you hear anecdotally from lots of people who use or have used Netflix (kids are a different story).

Hastings could rectify this, at a minimum, by adding a la carte rentals in addition to his subscription offerings. But he’s remained ardently opposed to the idea, for whatever reason.

Near-term, this won’t be as problematic for Hastings as the disappointing growth guidance he offered up Tuesday afternoon, which led to yesterday’s stock dive. And I personally stopped taking Consumer Reports that seriously in March, when they warned that the new iPad could kinda maybe get not exactly hot but sort of tepid. But for lots of people, Consumer Reports is still Consumer Reports, and their word — or at least word of their word — carries lots of weight.

Small consolation prize for Netflix: Consumer Reports thinks the company’s original DVD-by-mail business — the “old fogey discs” business, in Hastings’s words — is the best disc rental service. But that’s the business Hastings has decided to let fall away.

Update: The Consumer Reports reps who sent me a preview of their article have now asked me to pull the screenshot of their ratings graphic, which they don’t want republished beyond their magazine and Web site. That’s frustrating, but I’ll do my best to replicate the important stuff here:

Streaming services (name/reader score):

Vudu/76
iTunes/75
Amazon Instant/74
Amazon Prime/70
Hulu/70
Netflix/69
Video-on-demand channels/68
Hulu Plus/66

Disc rentals:

Netflix/78
Independent stores/77
Redbox/77
Blockbuster/71
Blockbuster Express/69
Blockbuster Total Access/68

Stateside Facebook Users Still Leaving the Curtains Open on Profiles

Mike Isaac — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:31:31 +0000

For the amount of discussion about our online identities in the digital era, you’d think we’d all be careful to keep our social network profiles in check. And yet a significant number of users aren’t as buttoned-up as they probably should be.

More specifically, I’m speaking of the 13 million U.S. Facebook users who don’t seem to care about using the site’s privacy controls, by Consumer Reports’ count. According to a study recently conducted by the magazine, nearly one-tenth of Facebook’s 169 million monthly active Stateside users haven’t touched the controls at all.

Part of that may be indifference, the report says, but a significant portion can also be chalked up to plain ignorance of exactly how those Facebook privacy controls work. Which, to some degree, even Facebook has seemed to acknowledge. After Google+ premiered last summer, complete with “Circles” — its excellent granular control system that allows users to easily compartmentalize exactly what info they’re sharing and with whom — Facebook tweaked its privacy controls to make it easier on its user base.

To be fair, 13 million is essentially a drop in the social bucket when compared to the 900-million-plus Facebook users from around the world that visit the site every month.

Still, it’s a signal that Facebook’s privacy settings aren’t as upfront and accessible as they could be.

(Image courtesy of Isabisa/Flickr)

Even if New iPad Is Hot, Consumer Reports Decides It's Not Bothered

Ina Fried — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:57:57 +0000

After earlier getting worked up about whether the iPad might heat up too much, Consumer Reports says further testing shows the issue isn’t that big a deal, after all.

“Responding to consumer comments on the new device, and to coverage from other reviewers, we also carried out further tests that confirmed the new iPad is warmer in its hottest spots than the iPad 2,” the magazine said on Monday. “But we didn’t find those temperatures to be cause for concern.”

Indeed, the magazine has done something of a 180, and now says the new iPad is tops among tablets.

Also recommended by the magazine were Sony’s Tablet P and Pantech’s water-resistant Element.

This iPad Is Too Hot, This iPad Is Too Cold

Ina Fried — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:26:58 +0000

While some people say the new iPad runs too hot, at least one person is pleased to see things heat up a bit.

DisplayMate chief Ray Soneira said that his biggest temperature issue with past iPads is the fact the aluminum-backed device is cool to the touch and sometime downright cold in his chilly New England locale.

“That aluminum back is there to help with the power heat dissipation of the electronics, but metals at room temperature often feel cold to the touch because of their high thermal conductivity,” he said in an email. “So when the iPad is on its additional warmth helps take the chill off.”

Of course, no one wants to be scalded by their tablet, either. Consumer Reports said this week that its testing shows the new iPad running as hot as 116 degrees — a full 13 degrees hotter than the prior model. Soneira said he, too, has noticed the new model runs hotter than past ones, particularly when running at full brightness as Soneira often does during his testing. Apple, for its part, maintains that the new iPad runs within its thermal guidelines.

I guess the lesson for those designing tablets is to aim for Goldilocks as the target customer: Not too hot, not too cold. We like our tablets just right.

MyiPadIsWarmToTheTouchGate: Consumer Reports Sounds Off on Hot iPad Issue

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:10:06 +0000

And, like clockwork, Consumer Reports has arrived to weigh in on reports that Apple’s new iPad generates an unusually large amount of heat.

The product evaluation agency’s take: It does, but not enough for anyone to worry about.

Earlier today, CR ran a battery of tests on the new iPad and found that while the new iPad runs up to 13 degrees hotter than its predecessor, at times hitting temperatures as high as 116 degrees Fahrenheit (running the graphics-intensive Infinity Blade game), it never gets hot enough to harm the device itself. In fact, it runs cooler than some laptops.

“During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands,” said Consumer Reports researcher Donna Tapellini. “When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.”

Apple, of course, has already dismissed complaints that the new iPad throws off more heat than its predecessors, telling AllThingsD that the device runs well “within our thermal specifications.”

Picking the Brightest, Most Efficient Bulb

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:41:30 +0000

The light bulb used to be one of the simplest hardware-store purchases. Now a walk down the lighting aisle prompts an assortment of questions. Is it energy efficient? Will it switch on fast? Can I put it on a dimmer? What is a lumen? How long will it last? Why so pricey? Why is it a weird color?

[ See post to watch video ]

Here’s a brief guide to some bulb basics, with help from Consumer Reports ratings, and a peek at what the future holds for the light bulb (hint: lower prices and remote control).

The Big Three Plus One

Bulbs can be divided into three main categories: incandescents, compact fluorescents (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). We’re most familiar with incandescents, which make use of technology from over 100 years ago. These cost the least, but emit heat and use up the most energy. An incandescent lasts an average of 1,000 hours, or 125 days when used for eight hours a day.

Lighting Science Group’s World Bulb uses less than 13 watts and will cost less than $15 a bulb.

More recently, halogen incandescent bulbs have become popular. The bulbs, which cost as little as $3 for two, look and behave like incandescents by dimming and turning on immediately, but use less energy. The Philips EcoVantage line, which became available in April, uses 28% less energy: A 72-watt bulb replaces a 100-watt, and a 43-watt bulb replaces a 60-watt. Halogen incandescents last as long as a traditional incandescent bulb.

Compact fluorescents, the spiral bulbs that became popular about five years ago, use less energy than incandescents but made a rough first impression. Compared with incandescents, compact fluorescents can appear harsher in color and most don’t turn on immediately. They’re made of glass, like incandescents, cost about $5 to $10 each and have an estimated average lifespan of 10,000 hours, or about 3½ years at eight hours a day. They contain a small amount of mercury and can be recycled at stores like Home Depot.

LEDs, which look roughly like the incandescents we’re used to, are the latest hit in energy-efficient bulbs. They’re also the most expensive, costing around $20 to $60 a bulb, though this will drop in coming months as they become more prevalent. These bulbs, which don’t contain mercury, turn on immediately, even in cold weather. Some are made of a durable plastic and many can be dimmed. Their light-emitting surfaces remain cool to the touch. The hue of light from these LED bulbs appears more like that of the traditional incandescents. They are estimated to save up to 85% more energy than standard incandescents, with a lifespan of 20,000 to 50,000 hours, or 20 to 40 years. At seven hours a day, one bulb could last an average of 17 years.

New Labeling Explained

For years, we’ve measured light bulbs by watts, which indicate how much energy a bulb uses. But bulb brightness is measured in lumens. Many of the new light bulbs’ boxes list lumens and include helpful notes about how the bulb compares with the wattage you are looking to replace. An incandescent 40-watt bulb gets replaced with a 450-lumen bulb; a 60-watt bulb with a 800-lumen bulb; a 75-watt bulb by a 1,100 lumen; and a 100 watt by a 1,600 lumen.

The Philips L Prize Bulb consumes less than 10 watts and has a lifespan of more than 25,000 hours.

More light bulbs are now packaged with a “Lighting Facts” label. Besides lumens, this may include factors like lumens per watt (bulb efficiency); watts (energy used to make the light); correlated color temperature, which indicates cool or warm color (about 2700 Kelvin replicates what we’re familiar with in a traditional incandescent); and a color-rendering index (the measurement of a light’s appearance on objects).

Best in Show

Consumer Reports recently tested several bulbs for factors like brightness, warm-up time, light distribution and actual lumens. The $10 GE Energy Smart SAF-T-GARD earned the highest overall ranking for 60-watt equivalent spiral CFL bulbs.

The $25 Philips AmbientLED 12.5W ranked best overall in the 60-watt equivalent A19 style (the typical pear-shape found in incandescent bulbs) covered bulb category.

Future Is Bright

Lighting Science Group Corp., maker of Home Depot’s EcoSmart bulbs, unveiled its sub-$15 World Bulb in December. This is a redesigned, 60-watt-replacement LED bulb that uses less power than the 13 watts of the company’s current equivalent bulb. It’ll be available in India in February and later this year in the U.S.

Lighting Science Group also has paired with Google to create the Android@Home Intelligent LED bulb, which people will be able to control using an Android smartphone, tablet or a computer. The bulb, which is expected to come out before June, will have an embedded chip and works with a gateway box that hooks into a router.

By June, Philips Lighting North America will debut its L Prize Bulb, an LED bulb that was the first to win the Department of Energy’s “L Prize,” an award for energy efficiency. Designed to replace a 60-watt incandescent, the LED bulb consumes less than 10 watts, according to Philips. In rigorous testing, the Energy Department said, the bulb had a useful lifetime of more than 25,000 hours. The bulb will likely start out at about $50.

Picking a Bulb

Light-bulb savings calculators found online, like one from National Geographic, give people a rough idea of how much they may save over time with incandescent, compact fluorescent and LED bulbs.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Consumer Reports Survey Again Dings AT&T, Praises Verizon

Ina Fried — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:10:57 +0000

Newsstand browsers will be forgiven if they pick up the January issue of Consumer Reports and aren’t sure if they have a new issue or an old one.

Once again, the magazine has found that, when it comes to the national wireless carriers, consumers are most satisfied with Verizon and least so with AT&T.

Potentially more interesting was that the annual survey found that three smaller carriers — U.S. Cellular, Credo and Consumer Cellular — all scored higher than any of the Big 4 wireless providers. Several prepaid brands, including TracFone and Straight Talk, also scored higher than the big brands.

“Our survey indicates that subscribers to prepaid and smaller standard-service providers are happiest overall with their cell-phone service,” Consumer Reports electronics editor Paul Reynolds said in a blog posting. “However, these carriers aren’t for everyone. Some are only regional, and prepaid carriers tend to offer few or no smart phones.The major carriers are still leading options for many consumers, and we found they ranged widely in how well they satisfied their customers.”

Also notable was the fact that the national carriers achieved higher scores for their prepaid service than they did among their traditional contract-based customers.

The magazine also called out new “value” pricing plans from T-Mobile which allow even contract customers to get their phones unsubsidized in exchange for a lower fee. Though the plans are a bit hard to wrap one’s head around, they can be money savers over time.

Update: AT&T said it will use the survey as a learning opportunity, but stressed the investments the company has been making.

“While we’ll of course evaluate and learn from the Consumer Reports survey, we made significant progress in our network in 2011 including a 25 percent improvement 3G dropped call performance, 48,000 network improvements (more capacity, new cell sites, faster data speeds, and better connections), and many billions of dollars in capital investment to continue to improve our network,” the company said in a statement to AllThingsD. AT&T also contends that its service would benefit further if it were allowed to buy T-Mobile, a deal that has been opposed by U.S. regulators.

Consumer Reports Says iPhone 4S Fixes Antenna Woes, Can Finally Recommend

Ina Fried — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:40:19 +0000

Consumer Reports, which has long had issues with the iPhone, says Apple has finally come out with a smartphone it can recommend.

The magazine initially withheld its recommendation because of call-quality issues. Even when Apple added a Verizon model, Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the phone because of the “Antennagate” issue, in which holding the phone a certain way could affect the phone’s signal.

“In special reception tests of the iPhone 4S that duplicated those we did on the iPhone 4, the newer phone did not display the same reception flaw, which involves a loss of signal strength when you touch a spot on the phone’s lower left side while you’re in an area with a weak signal,” the magazine’s Mike Gikas said in a blog post.

The company noted the battery issues that some users have been experiencing with iOS 5, and said it would retest the device when Apple releases its software update.

Although it added the new iPhone to its recommended list, Consumer Reports said that Apple’s model still trails several of the newest Android devices in its rankings, including Samsung’s Galaxy S II family of phones and Motorola’s Droid Bionic.

The Nook Gets a Nudge From Consumer Reports

Peter Kafka — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:19:09 +0000

Barnes & Noble’s newest Nook has fewer features than its predecessor, as well as many other rivals. That’s great, says Consumer Reports, which has crowned the new $139 device its favorite e-book reader. It’s the first time the magazine has put an e-reader made by anyone other than Amazon at the top of its rankings.

MacBooks Sweep Consumer Reports Laptop Ratings

John Paczkowski — Wed, 25 May 2011 08:10:42 +0000

Consumer Reports may have twice declined to recommend Apple’s iPhone 4, but it has no such compunctions about endorsing its laptops. The product evaluation company recently added Apple’s newest MacBooks to its online database and they dominate the entire class, scoring top ranks in literally every size category.

Among the 11-inch laptops Consumer Reports reviewed, the MacBook Air scored a 62 out of 100 possible points, besting a Gateway machine that scored 52.

Among 13-inch laptops, the MacBook, MacBook Air and 3 models of the MacBook Pro took first through fifth place with scores that began at 76 (MacBook Air) and ended at 67 (MacBook).

Among 15- to 16-inch laptops, the MacBook Pro took first, second and third place, with scores of 78, 77 and 76, beating out Dell’s MacBook Pro-esque XPs 15 and HP’s Pavilion.

And, finally, among 17- to 18-inch laptops the MacBook Pro took first and second place with scores of 81 and 80. HP’s Pavilion ranked a close third with a score of 79.

Minor Controversy: Zuckerberg Wants Young Kids on Facebook

Liz Gannes — Fri, 20 May 2011 20:51:13 +0000

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview this week he would like to create a safe and educational social networking environment for kids younger than 13. (According to Consumer Reports, 7.5 million such American kids already use Facebook by lying about their age.) “That will be a fight we take on at some point,” Zuckerberg reportedly said of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which mandates parental permission and other protections for young users. And here we thought China was Facebook’s next big controversy…

Bezos Says Stay Tuned for That Amazon Tablet We All Know Is Coming

Ina Fried — Thu, 12 May 2011 23:10:49 +0000

It’s always hard to identify the worst kept secret in technology, since there are so many poorly guarded ones, but Amazon’s Android tablet is certainly creeping up the ranks.

It climbed another notch this week as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told Consumer Reports to “stay tuned” for word on the company’s tablet.

“We will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device,” Bezos told the magazine. “In terms of any other product introductions, I shouldn’t answer.”

His comments suggest that any tablet would be kept distinct from the company’s Kindle e-reader, which uses a grayscale E Ink screen well suited to reading but not so hot for things such as video and advanced gaming.

Although this was Amazon’s most official comment yet on the long-rumored tablet, there has been no shortage of signs that the company is headed that way. In addition to reports of manufacturing plans, there are the steps Amazon has taken to pave the way for such a product, including the launch of its Android App Store as well as a tablet version of Kindle Reader (though admittedly Amazon has apps for nearly every mobile platform out there).

Rival Barnes & Noble has been inching toward all-purpose tablet status itself, though with a different approach. The company’s Nook Color has always been Android-based. However, it has been getting additional tablet features over time. Last month, the Nook Color gained an email program as well as access to a Barnes & Noble-curated store of approved apps.

Meanwhile, dedicated e-readers have come under fierce competition from general purpose tablets like the iPad that have e-book apps, including Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, but can also do everything from play movies to surf the Web and do 3-D gaming.

Millions of Kids Are Sneaking on Facebook

Liz Gannes — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:33:03 +0000

While Facebook requires users to be at least 13, Consumer Reports projects that an estimated 7.5 million kids are lying about their age so they can use the service, and five million of those kids are age 10 and under. The magazine notes that children may be exposed to privacy and security risks, and tsk-tsks, “What’s even more troubling was the finding from our survey that indicated that a majority of parents of kids 10 and under seemed largely unconcerned by their children’s use of the site.” Facebook, for its part, spun the news by thanking such reports for bringing attention to the issue.

IPad Takes First and Second Place in Consumer Reports Tablet Ratings

John Paczkowski — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:17:15 +0000

The tablet wars rage on, but Consumer Reports has already declared a winner: Apple’s iPad 2, which outscored rival devices from Motorola, Dell, Samsung, ViewSonic and Archos. Judged against 17 criteria, including touch-screen responsiveness, versatility, portability, screen glare, and ease of use, the 32GB Wi-Fi+3G verison of the iPad 2 came out with a top rating of “Excellent” in nearly all of them. Its closest rivals were the Motorola Xoom and the first generation iPad, which tied for second place.

Consumer Reports Continues Its Love-to-Hate Relationship With the iPhone 4

Ina Fried — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:50:53 +0000

Consumer Reports said Friday that the Verizon version of the iPhone–like its AT&T sibling–is susceptible to signal problems if held the wrong way.

In a blog post,, the publication said its lab tests showed phone problems could occur if the gap in the metal casing was blocked by a hand.

“The Verizon iPhone 4 closely resembles the original AT&T iPhone 4 in many positive respects, including offering great multimedia functionality, a sharp screen, and the best MP3 player we’ve seen on a phone,” it said in the blog. “Unfortunately, it also shares with its sibling the possibility of compromised performance in low-signal conditions when used without a bumper or case.”

The publication said its testing showed that the issue is specific to the iPhone and doesn’t appear to happen with other phones.

“The only phones in which the finger contact caused any meaningful decline in performance was the iPhone 4, the sides of which comprise a metal band broken by several thin gaps,” it wrote. “As with our tests of the AT&T iPhone 4, putting a finger across one particular gap–the one on the lower left side–caused performance to decline. Bridging this gap is easy to do inadvertently, especially when the phone is in your palm, which might readily and continuously cover the gap during a call.

As with the AT&T version, a case can help alleviate potential problems.

Consumer Reports declined to recommend the AT&T iPhone over the antenna issues, even though it still gave the device the highest smartphone ranking.

The Verizon iPhone is getting similar mixed signals, with Consumer Reports giving it high rankings but leaving it off the recommended list due to the antenna issues.

Update: Verizon said in a statement that its customers are experiencing “stellar network performance” with less than one half of one percent of iPhone 4 calls being dropped in major cities such as New York and San Francisco.

Sprint-Nextel CEO Dan Hesse Talks About Clearwire (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 05:24:18 +0000

In an interview at D: Dive Into Mobile, Sprint-Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said that despite the fact it owns roughly 54 percent of Clearwire, Sprint doesn’t control the company or its board of directors. Walt Mossberg gave him a little grief about it, asking, “Who did that deal?”

Also during the interview: Why it made sense to have an outside company build its 4G network, what’s different between 3G and 4G and whether or not 4G is really unlimited. He also talked about why he likes Consumer Reports while other wireless executives don’t.

[ See post to watch video ]

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse at Dive Into Mobile

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:45:26 +0000

When Sprint CEO Dan Hesse joined the company three years ago, the third-largest carrier was bleeding subscribers from having a poor reputation for customer service and facing stiff competition from the likes of AT&T, which holds the exclusive on the iPhone.

Since then, Sprint has stemmed the losses, mostly by beefing up its customer service and by investing in the prepaid sector to attract a wider audience during the economic downturn. Going forward, Sprint looks to its 4G strategy for growth through its ownership stake in WiMax-provider Clearwire. Next up, Hesse joins Walt Mossberg onstage.

3:45 pm: Walt welcomes Dan Hesse to the stage. You can’t have mobile without networks, says Walt. You’ve led the way on 4G; tell us about it.

3:46 pm: Dan: We are getting San Francisco up soon, and will have 120 million POPs by the end of the year, or about a third of the country.

He explains what 4G is: 3G for was email and Web pages, but 4G is for multimedia and video.

The best analogy is that 4G is the wide open freeway vs. an interstate that provides the same speeds, but you have to stop along the way.

3:48 pm: Walt: Why are you using WiMax when the two other carriers are using LTE?

Hesse: Back in 2008, we wanted to be first, and WiMax was available right now. (Lots to do with TDD, and other technical mumbo jumbo). Technically, there’s no difference. I can’t deny that LTE will be a bigger ecosystem, but we couldn’t wait. We thought the market was ready.

With the success of the iPhone, we thought it was ready now.

Walt: How much leadership did it give you?

Hesse: Well, it made Verizon move a lot faster….In 2010, we’ll have 120 million POPs, and the EVO and Epic (two 4G phones) have been really successful.

Walt: How successful?

Hesse: If you were to go to Clearwire’s wholesale numbers, you should think of Sprint’s lion’s share of the wholesale numbers.

Walt: Was it worth the investment?

Hesse: I think so.

3:53 pm: Hesse: 4G is one element of many.

Walt: You like Consumer Reports, unlike the guy here earlier [AT&T's Glenn Lurie].

Hesse: Sprint is the fastest growing brand of postpaid in the U.S.–not the Nextel brand, where we’ve been losing subscribers.

3:55 pm: Walt: Are you going to get the iPhone?

Hesse: Can’t say.

Walt: Would you like the iPhone?

Hesse: Under the right conditions, yes, I would. It’s a wonderful phone.

3:56 pm: Backing up a bit, Walt now asks about an industry trend toward tiered pricing for data plans, where the more you use, the more you pay.

Sprint hasn’t yet limited users’ traffic.

Hesse: Customers will pay a premium for simplicity. Even if it’s not in their best economic interest, they will go with the unlimited plan. We were the first to come out with truly unlimited text, voice and data with the Simply Everything plan.

3:59 pm: Walt: Are you not going to do tiered pricing?

Hesse: So far, we aren’t, he says, which gets a round of applause from the audience. But Sprint did up the cost of the unlimited plans of the most capable devices on the network.

4:00 pm: Walt: Unlimited means unlimited or doesn’t it?

Hesse: No, it doesn’t. What if they have the SlingBox streaming 24×7?

4:01 pm: Hesse: The trend is toward one plan for all of your devices, like tablets, phones, PCs, etc.

Walt: Are you going to offer plans for all those devices?

Hesse: We are thinking about it. That’s the next step to simplicity. Three years ago, it was about one device.

4:02 pm: Walt: People aren’t counting minutes, now they are counting megabytes and things people don’t understand.

Hesse: Something has to give; what’s going to be the form? Do you have meters, do you have tiers, do you increase the price of the unlimited plans?

Another option is to have a lot more spectrum available to add capacity at a lower cost.

Walt: Are you talking about taking away the spectrum that the elderly use to watch their TV?

Hesse: If more spectrum is available, you can use more frequencies, which is a lot less expensive than splitting cell sites and putting in more towers.

Walt: There’s some confusion about Clearwire. They are opening stores and selling laptops and modems. You own most of that company, and they are building your WiMax network. Why are they competing with you?

Hesse: I have a wholesale business that resells minutes to Leap, so it’s the same thing.

4:06 pm: Walt’s giving Hesse grief about the structure of the Clearwire deal. Despite Sprint owning roughly 54 percent of the company, Sprint doesn’t control the board.

Walt: Who did that deal?

Hesse: Two thumbs pointing at himself [me]. When you have this many owners of the company, we can’t agree.

4:08 pm: Walt: What’s the value of 4G?

Hesse: The experience is really fast, and we offer unlimited plans on 4G. There’s a five-gigabyte cap on 3G, but 4G is completely unlimited.

Walt’s curious if 4G is really life-changing and transformative. Sprint’s beating the other guys by 2x, not 10x or 20x.

Hesse: My son showed me his speed test on his EVO at home, and it was over 8 mbps, so it depends.

4:11 pm: Questions from the audience. The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley asks about the potential deal between Clearwire and T-Mobile, which may be falling apart because of Clearwire’s recent $1 billion in debt that it has raised.

Hesse deflects the question despite several reports to the contrary, by saying he didn’t know anything about that.

Another audience question: What’s your stance on network neutrality?

Hesse: The FCC has come out with a proposal, and we are very supportive of it.

Consumer Reports Slams AT&T (Again)

Ina Fried — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:33:50 +0000

Consumer Reports has been taking swings at AT&T’s cellphone service for a while now. But the carrier finds itself in its crosshairs once again.

The January 2011 issue ranking cellphones and services carries this headline on the cover: “Best and worst providers (Sorry AT&T).”

I’m going to try to pick up a copy this morning and will then update, but here are the highlights, according to the Houston Chronicle. AT&T got the magazine’s full black dot rating (that’s as low as it gets) in almost every nationwide category, while Verizon topped the rankings.

AT&T sent out the following statement in response to the rankings: “We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide. And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent–the equivalent of just one call in a thousand–of the industry leader.”

On the device side, the iPhone (the same one that the magazine once recommended against buying) tops the list of phones available at AT&T, the Droid X and Samsung Fascinate tied for best Verizon option and Samsung’s Epic and Vibrant top the options at Sprint and T-Mobile, respectively.

MacBook Air Rises to Top of Consumer Reports Ratings

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:48:54 +0000

More good press for the MacBook Air. Consumer Reports updated its computer ratings earlier this week to include the machine, and while it had some criticisms, it ranked the 11-inch Air and its 13-inch sibling at the top of their respective categories and gave both machines a “recommended” rating. (Sorry, full rating access is for subscribers only.)

The 11-inch Air scored 67 points out of 100, well above its closest rival, the Toshiba Satellite, which scored a 51. Meanwhile the 13-inch model scored 78 points out of 100, two points better than the Toshiba Portege. The publication found the Airs’ performance, displays and ergonomics to be their stand-out features, but wasn’t quite as impressed by the speakers on the 11-inch model and the versatility of both, which it rated as “fair.”

And then, of course, there is the issue of price. Both Airs exceeded their closest rivals on that front as well. At $1,300, the 13-inch Air is $520 more than the Portege, and at $1,000, the 11-inch is approximately double the price of the Satellite. ’Course, the Satellite also weighs over a pound more and pales in the performance, ergonomics and display categories, so there are obvious trade-offs here.

In any event, a good showing for Apple. If the Air truly is the future of the MacBook, as Steve Jobs claims, Apple has a lot to look forward to.

Digital Cameras Improve Zooms, HD Function

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:26:27 +0000

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, so, too, comes the start of the holiday shopping mayhem. Once again, digital cameras are rocketing to the top of wish lists, and once again, shoppers are tentatively entering electronics stores with bewildered looks on their faces.

[ See post to watch video ]

To alleviate some of that shopping stress, I’ve compiled a buyer’s guide for different camera categories with prices and pointers to innovation. This year, manufacturers have improved photo-location tagging and are offering artistic photo alteration and clever ways to label images for future sharing on social networks.

Let’s Get Physical

Consumers are starting to understand that better sensors make it possible to do things like taking photos in low light, which can really make a difference in photo quality. Some high-quality sensors are making their way into affordable models, like the CMOS sensor in Nikon’s $300 Coolpix S8100. High megapixel counts aren’t overly important, though more megapixels per photo still make it easier to zoom in while editing and give higher resolution in a larger photo or poster. A 14-megapixel camera like the Olympus FE-47 costs just $100, but a recent Consumer Reports review gave it low marks in handling shake and liquid-crystal-display screen quality. Optical zoom, or the physically manipulated distance between the camera and a subject, is still more important than digital zoom, and it’s easy to find many models with 7x optical zoom or better. LCD screens on digicams are so large that they leave little room for optical viewfinders, thus making built-in image stabilization all the more important. Image stabilization comes on nearly all new cameras. And more digicams than ever are capable of recording high-definition videos.

Breaking It Down

Digital cameras can be divided into four broad categories: pocket-size, point-and-shoot, super- or mega-zooms and digital single-lens reflexes (D-SLRs). I’ll leave SLRs out of the discussion, since they’re still primarily aimed at hobbyists who don’t mind the cost and effort of buying additional lenses, filters, flashes and other accessories.

Most pocket-size digital cameras cost between $100 and $300, weigh no more than seven ounces and lack optical viewfinders, forcing users to look at LCD screens to compose pictures. Most of these LCD viewing screens measure between 2.6 inches and 3.5 inches diagonally. Samsung, however, has an even bigger touch-screen LCD, at 3.7 inches, on its CL80 camera priced at $350.

These small but powerful machines capture images with 10, 12 or 14 megapixels and their optical zoom lenses usually range from 3x to 7x, though a handful of manufacturers are boosting their cameras’ optical zooms. The $170 Casio Exilim EX-H5, for example, is equipped with a 10x optical zoom lens.

Today’s point-and-shoot digital cameras are sleeker and more stylish than they used to be, though they remain somewhat bulkier than their pocket-size relatives. The point-and-shoot size can allow for better optical zoom lenses, and these models sometimes cost less than the pocket sizes. The $300 Canon PowerShot SX210 IS and $280 Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 are equipped with 14x and 12x optical zoom lenses, respectively.

Super-zoom or mega-zoom digital cameras satisfy people who want the power of a great zoom and optional manual settings without the hassle and expense of an SLR. At a glance, you might mistake these models for SLRs due to their bulkier bodies, and, in some cases, detachable (or hot-shoe) flashes. Nikon’s $400 Coolpix P100 offers a 26x wide-angle optical zoom, and Olympus’s $350 SP-800UZ is the smallest camera with a 30x wide-angle optical zoom. Both cameras have built-in flashes, but the Nikon includes an optical viewfinder while the Olympus offers only an LCD screen for viewing and capturing photos.

Shaking It Up

Camera manufacturers are adding creative new features to these devices. Starting the week of Thanksgiving, Casio will provide Hybrid GPS on its $350 EX-H20G, which geotags (adds digital location information to) images indoors where GPS satellite signals can’t reach. This works using a combined GPS radio and motion sensor to measure the direction in which the camera has moved, and how fast. When you’re back in satellite range, the camera corrects the geotag by cross-referencing its own estimates with satellite-provided latitude and longitude.

Olympus now has art filters, which let you view your subject with special effects before capturing the photo. Some filters supply gentle sepia, soft focus or grainy film. There is also a drawing filter, which makes a subject instantly appear as a sketch.

Samsung’s $150 PL90 model has a pop-out USB arm that reminds me a lot of the pop-out USB connector on Cisco’s popular Flip camcorders. Samsung’s USB arm eliminates the need for messy wires, or the removal of a memory card to transfer photos from a digicam to a PC.

Many cameras have and continue to supply guides that appear on screen as a photo is being captured. Sony’s NEX-5 offers this, and the Olympus Live Guide let you preview photo adjustments—like brightness or color saturation—on the screen as you make them. Nikon’s Scene Auto Selector, found in the Coolpix P7000, Coolpix S8100 and Coolpix S80, will automatically adjust the camera’s settings so users can stop worrying about scrolling through menus to select the right scene from a list.

Fujifilm offers the only true (not simulated) three-dimensional digital camera in its $500 FinePix REAL 3D W3, which I reviewed in August. These 3D images can be seen through the camera’s LCD viewing screen but not on laptops or television sets unless they’re 3D-capable and you’re wearing 3D glasses.

Kodak is trying to encourage sharing with its cameras by including a Share button that, when pressed, digitally tags images and videos with labels for Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Kodak Gallery or email, then automatically sends the photos to those places when you next plug the camera into a PC.

One last warning: Don’t be seduced by lower prices or better technology alone. Be sure you try a camera in the store before buying it. The way it feels or works for you is just as important as any technological specification.

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Any Skin in the Game is Fine with Microsoft Kinect

Nick Wingfield — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:16:01 +0000

Last night, the game news website GameSpot kicked up a controversy over a new camera-based game controller from Microsoft, Kinect, with a post that said two dark-skinned GameSpot employees had trouble with the system’s facial recognition feature.

That prompted the website of Consumer Reports to run its own tests to see if it could duplicate Kinect’s alleged discrimination. The publication just posted its results under the headline, “Consumers Reports debunks the ‘racist’ Kinect.” (That headline was a bit of a straw man since GameSpot didn’t say definitively that dark skin was the cause of the problems, much less claim Kinect was racist. Plus can objects be racist?)

Consumer Reports said they found the problem GameSpot wrote about was related to low room lighting, rather than skin color. Like GameSpot, Consumer Reports found the issue only occurred with Kinect’s facial recognition, a feature that allows players to automatically log in to their Xboxes when they stand in front of Kinect’s camera to load their personal gamer profiles. Lighting conditions didn’t affect playing actual games with Kinect, Consumer Reports said.

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