Apple Again Tops J.D. Power Rankings of Smartphone Consumer Satisfaction

I'm an AV tech and I have been working with our General Contractor (he is in his 60s) on a new buildout. A few months ago he expressed his frustrations with his Blackberry and trying to attach photos to an email. I showed him how to do it in about 10 seconds on my iPhone 4.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, he comes up to me with his new iPhone 4. He explained how much he liked it by saying

'It's like a pretty girl, that likes me!"

Enough said.

Wonder how they define performance & features. Both HTC & Samsung have more/better spec.'ed devices.

Overall USER EXPERIENCE.

Hard to quantify (it has very little to do with raw specs) but easy to recognize. Hence, the general consumer response to Apple products. Ask anyone what this means exactly, and they will probably find it difficult to articulate. But they are nonetheless drawn to it. It's recognizable.

The closest approximation is what results from the synergy between hardware and software. Apple's nailed it.

Did anyone else notice that across the board the star ratings were the same from category to category for each company?

It's like they came up with an overall score for each company first, and then copied and pasted it into each category score for the company.

Not true for HTC, Moto, and RIM.

Wonder how they define performance & features. Both HTC & Samsung have more/better spec.'ed devices.

I've had half a dozen smartphones before. Nokia, Sony, Palm, Samsung.. I'm from the Philippines. Believe it or not, before North America was using smartphones, we already had smartphones available to every pedestrian.

My point-- after experiencing iPhone I saw how clumsy and totally crappy all the others were. Confusing interface, sluggish response, button chaos. Yes they had some more functions but the ones you like on paper but never get to use them or need them anyway.

iPhone made it easier and smarter. Look at the design of its predecessors and it's hard to deny that iPhone changed smartphones forever. The 5 stars are truly deserve and beyond challenge.

I'm an AV tech and I have been working with our General Contractor (he is in his 60s) on a new buildout. A few months ago he expressed his frustrations with his Blackberry and trying to attach photos to an email. I showed him how to do it in about 10 seconds on my iPhone 4.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, he comes up to me with his new iPhone 4. He explained how much he liked it by saying

'It's like a pretty girl, that likes me!"

Enough said.

That's actually a pretty brilliant encapsulation of what's going on.

It seems that Apple devices provide an extra element of pleasure and comfort while an action is being executed on them - and it doesn't come from one single element, but rather, the unit as a whole (which points to the strength of the overall platform/ecosystem.) Yes, you get the results that an effective tool would give you, but there's that extra element that makes you want to keep using it.

Again, tough to articulate. Your colleague used what comes naturally - a metaphor (or more specifically, a simile.) This is probably far more expressive than shooting for an exact definition.

They didn't just top the rankings, they wiped the floor with the rest of the manufacturers with a perfect score. None of the others had five stars in any category.

Wonder how they define performance & features. Both HTC & Samsung have more/better spec.'ed devices.

Well, better specs don't necessarily mean better performance. It's a combination of hardware and the software written for it.

It is interesting it is done by manufacturer and not platform.

So a HTC Windows Phone might perform better than a HTC Android Phone. Or a customer may prefer the features on a Samsung Android Phone over a Samsung Windows Phone…

When even the lowly 3GS outsells a lot of newer smartphones, you know Apple's got their thumb on the winning formula between hardware and software.

I get it. I didn't mean like the JD Power data. It's meaningless to compare "Samsung" and "Nokia" because they make plenty of dumb phones, the battery lives of which aren't apples-to-apples comparable to smartphones.

Have you seen an article where iPhone 4 battery life is shoddy compared to similar smartphones?

I hate my iPhone's battery as of late, but I think there is actually something wrong with it (drains 10%/hour in standby).

I just think that it was dishonest for MacRumors to omit the battery score from the image, just to make it look like the iPhone had a spotless score.