Consumer Reports recommends the iPhone 4S
The Apple iPhone 4S is among the recommended models in our newly updated Ratings of smart phones. Apple's newest smart phone performed very well in our tests, and while it closely resembles the iPhone 4 in appearance, it doesn't suffer …
Context & Ripple Effects
This recommendation closes a loop opened in summer 2010, when Consumer Reports declined to recommend the iPhone 4 over problems its testers flagged and Apple responded with a rare public letter defending the phone's design. A year later the lab was still holding the line, keeping the iPhone 4 off its recommended list even as owner surveys showed buyers largely satisfied.
The iPhone 4S changes the calculus not through a redesign but through iteration: Consumer Reports finds the new model, though nearly identical in appearance, avoids the issues that sank its predecessor. Coming just weeks after This is my next's positive iPhone 4S review, the lab's blessing hands Apple independent validation heading into the holiday quarter.
First-order effects
- Apple enters the holiday shopping season with its newest phone carrying a Consumer Reports recommendation, removing the credibility discount the iPhone 4 carried since 2010 among buyers who rely on the Ratings.
- Consumers choosing between the discounted iPhone 4 and the new 4S now have a third-party signal pointing specifically to the newer model, since the older phone remains off the recommended list.
Second-order effects
- Android handset makers competing for holiday upgrades face an iPhone that is both fresh and independently vetted, raising the bar for rival flagships to secure equivalent reviewer endorsements.
- The verdict pressures Apple's competitors to match not just features but test-lab performance, since Consumer Reports' methodology rewards reliability over specification sheets.
Third-order effects
- If iterative hardware revisions can rehabilitate a flagship's reputation without a redesign, independent testing labs become a durable gatekeeper whose verdicts carry across product generations — a standing Apple will want to protect as it iterates future iPhones.
- The episode reinforces a pattern where a manufacturer's response to a publicized hardware flaw is measured by whether the next model clears the same tests, making lab re-tests a recurring checkpoint in smartphone cycles.
The trend: Smartphone reputations are increasingly made or broken by independent lab verdicts that follow products across generations, forcing manufacturers to treat tester findings as a design input rather than a PR problem.