Consumer Reports has put out its regular list of the best cell phones and carriers. Though this time around, I'm more in agreement with the results, like
last year there were a few phones on the list I didn't love quite as much. And I'm surprised again as to just how many older models are included. Given Consumer Reports' lead time, keep in mind that none of the phones introduced in the last couple months (such as the
LG Voyager) are on the list, but by and large it's quite comprehensive.
The leader of the pack...vroom, vroom.(Credit: CNET Networks)
Out of the 40 phones that Consumer Reports included in its testing, T-Mobile's
Motorola V195 took top honor with a score of 68 out of 100. On the whole it was a solid handset with dependable call quality, even though it is a year and a half old. We also liked that it was one of the first phones without a camera to offer Bluetooth. Second place went to AT&T's
Samsung Sync SGH-A707 (another 2006 model) with a score of 67, while AT&T's
Sony Ericsson W810i secured third place with a score of 65. I'm a bit mixed on these two. Though the Sync wasn't a bad phone by any means, it certainly wasn't one my favorites. On the other hand, I did approve of the W810i. Finally, on the other end of the list were Verizon's
LG VX9400 and Sprint's
Motorola ic502, which tied for the bottom spot with 51 points each. We actually liked the
V Cast Mobile TV-enabled VX9400 but we concur that the ic502 was a stinker.
When broken out by carrier, Consumer Reports also produced some interesting results. The top three Verizon Wireless models were the
G'zOne Type-S (63), the
LG Chocolate VX8550 (62), and the
Nokia 6315i (61). The Chocolate was a very nice model, and the Type-S is one of the most durable handsets around, but the 6315i (yet another 2006 phone) was just average, in our opinion.
The top Sprint phone was the
LG Muziq LX570 (60), the
Sanyo Katana DLX (58), and the
Sanyo M1 (57). All three of those devices were ranked highly in our tests, though it's too bad the magazine never got around to testing the
Motorola Razr2 V9m or the
LG Rumor. If it had, it would be interesting to see if those handsets would have swayed the results.
For T-Mobile, the aforementioned V195 took the top spot and was followed by the
Nokia 6103 (64) and the
Samsung SGH-T629 (61). These models were also decent, but I have to disagree with placing them at the top. Instead, I'd move up the
Motorola Rizr Z3 and the
Nokia 5300, which received scores of just 60 and 54, respectively. Also, the
Moto V195s is a more recent update to the V195.
On the AT&T side, the
Motorola Razr2 V9 (64) took third place after the previously mentioned the Sync and W810i. I'd disagree here, too, and would have to boost the Razr2 V9 and the (now discontinued)
LG CU500v. I also found it odd that the
Apple iPhone didn't make the top AT" >
The best smartphone, or so says Consumer Reports.(Credit: Corrine Schulze/CNET Netwroks)
To its credit, the iPhone topped the list of the best smartphones with a rating of 64. It was followed by the Palm Treo 755p (63) and the Samsung BlackJack (62). Though the BlackJack was fine, I'd ask why the
AT&T Tilt or the
Nokia N95 or the
Samsung SCH-i760 didn't make the list. Verizon's
Motorola Q was the lowest ranked smart phone with just 51 points. We pretty much agreed with that assessment and gave the Q a rating of 6.0.
The biggest surprises came from the magazine's carrier ratings.
Verizon Wireless took the top ranking in 16 markets except in Minneapolis where T-Mobile was the winner and in Tampa, Phoenix, and Cleveland, where
Alltel won.
T-Mobile took second place in 14 of the markets, while poor
Sprint ranked at the bottom in all but one. Only in Minneapolis did it take the No. 3 spot bumping
AT&T down to last place. And speaking of AT&T, America's largest carrier consistently ranked in in the penultimate spot except in Minneapolis and Dallas, where it was the second-best carrier. Interestingly enough, Consumer Reports said AT&T is "home of the iPhone but trails the better carriers in almost all respects." Our
own ratings from CNET readers agree.
The guys over at DEVONtechnologies have announced updates for a number of their applications. Most importantly the entire line of DEVONthink information managing software (along with DEVONnote) now natively support Spotlight. They note that this allows you to search multiple DEVONthink Pro databases at once from Spotlight. In addition they've updated their line of freeware applications to be compatible with Leopard, including the handy menubar folder utility XMenu.
One of the unfortunate incompatibilities Leopard brought with it was breaking GrowlMail, the plugin for Mail.app that shows new messages via the Growl notification system. However, Evan Schoenberg has now 
(Credit: Corner Shot) 
Apple has posted 