:) ISPs: Customers lucky enough to have Verizon's FIOS gave it the highest ISP score, 8.6 out of 10.
:( ISPs: DSL providers score generally lower than cable, despite needing fewer repairs.
:) Cell-phone providers: US Cellular is the top contract provider with our readers, scoring 7.8 out of 10.
:) Digital cameras: Canon is not only an overall Readers' Choice, it earned the Reader's Choice in all camera subcategories.
:) MP3 Players: Apple dominates with the highest market share and overall score.
:( Network routers: Cisco dropped over a full point to 7.9, losings its Readers' Choice, while its Linksys division remains steady with 8.1.
Yes, our readers can hear you now. Verizon Wireless lost its spot at the top of the contract providers to "super-regional" US Cellular, which went up a half point to 7.8 out of 10, despite serving only 26 states. But Verizon Wireless did gain a tenth of a point overall, as well as the high score in pay-as-you-go cellular services for its INpulse brand, with a score of 7.5. Virgin Mobile, last year's winner, shares the Readers' Choice spotlight with the same score.
In the area of pay-as-you-go, every provider's score increased a bit, which might be a sign that contracts aren't the way to go. But the contract players are up a bit as well, except for Sprint and Nextel (basically one company, anyway). Missing this year altogether: Qwest and SunCom.
iPhone owners passionately love their devices. In its first year on the survey, the Apple iPhone scored a stunning 9.1 out of 10 from our readers, beating the ratings that every other phone, from every carrier, in nearly every category, has received in the three years we've been including cell phones. The iPhone's 9.6 scores in music and video playback might have been expected, but its 8.2 for call quality (a score significantly better than average), another 8.2 for coverage, and an 8.0 for earpiece volume show that it's not just the i our readers like. They love the phone, too.
In the case of other devices, our readers seem to have settled into slightly cranky resignation. Almost all brands on nearly every carrier rated scores between 7.0 and 7.5 overall, with differentiations coming feature by feature. Check out our online charts for full details.
In our survey, we didn't distinguish between "smartphones"generally more expensive and more complex, in essence little pocket computersand voice-oriented "feature phones." So we'll try to do that here. For folks who don't want an iPhone, here's how phones on all the national carriers stacked up.
If you're lucky enough to be in a state serviced by US Cellular, you'd be foolish not to consider it for yourself.
Skip the monthly contract and you still get superior coverage with Verizon, or opt for Virgin's equally impressive plans.
There's a huge drop in satisfaction between iPhone owners, BlackBerry owners (in second place), and everyone else. All other manufacturers were tightly bunched together. Among them, if you have to pick a feature phone on AT&T, our readers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Nokia's phones seem better at Web browsing, whereas Sony Ericsson's devices are louder and make better music players. LG-branded feature phones fared worst, but not by much, and they made a big jump forward from last yearmoving from a 6.5 overall rating to a 7.0. That's probably because AT&T has shuffled off some poorly performing old LG GSM models in exchange for much-better-quality 3G phones.
As always, Sanyo came out head and shoulders above Sprint's feature-phone crowd by triumphing in all the "talking" categories: coverage, call quality, volume, and such. Sanyo phones were also considerably more reliable than other manufacturers, needing tech support and repairs less often than any other Sprint phone. Palm, the only smartphone manufacturer on our survey, fell from grace this year, dropping from 8.1 to 7.4possibly because 39 percent of our readers' phones needed tech support and 26 percent needed repairs.
BlackBerry smartphones took the lead over T-Mobile's house-brand Windows Mobile phones (made by HTC) seemingly thanks to the 'Berrys' awesome e-mailthough the Windows Mobile devices actually scored better on all the voice-oriented subcategories, in reliability and as PDAs. Our readers like Nokia's feature phones and dislike those from Samsung. But, frankly, you might want to get one of those T-Mobile-branded smartphones just to talk on, as they led all the manufacturers of T-Mobile phones in call quality.