With email becoming ever more dominant in both our work and personal lives there’s been an explosion in portable devices to help us keep in touch with it while on the move. Few will be surprised at the wide disparity between good and bad devices; our results matched popular hearsay that some devices tend to be noticeably better or more poor than others.
We rated PDAs and Smartphones in terms of Battery Life, Reliability and the usual Satisfaction score (comprised one third of Value For Money and two-thirds Buy Again factor). Last year we saw some of the survey’s lowest overall scores here and this year wasn’t different. But first to the winners.
Out of 2900 (overall) respondents RIM’s BlackBerry was a clear victor while last year’s winner Palm was a clear runner up. 81% of BlackBerry customers were satisfied with Battery Life – well up on the overall average of 65% and noticeably above second-placed Palm’s 74%. At the other end of the spectrum 60% of Nokia users were satisfied and a paltry 53% of O2’s users were.
Only 71% of all buyers were satisfied with Reliability. Again BlackBerry stood out with 84% of customers being satisfied and Palm followed with 80%. But i-mate and O2 should be wondering why only 56% of their customers were happy with Reliability.
Across the board, only 62% of customers were happy with the Value on offer. Even BlackBerry dropped down to having 73% of buyers satisfied here with Palm and HTC/Dopod hovering around 70%. But O2 satisfied a pathetic 45% of customers and i-mate wasn’t much better, satisfying only 51% of its customers.
Not surprisingly the buy again rating was generally low. Only three-quarters of respondents said they’d buy from the same manufacturer again. However, it’s clear that mobiles possess a certain je ne sais quoi as people said they’d come back to brands they didn’t rate highly elsewhere. Nokia did best with 89% saying they’d be back. 85% of HTC/Dopod users said similar, as did 84% of BlackBerry customers and 78% of Palm and Sony Ericsson buyers. A poor 64% said they’d buy from i-mate again and a Dreadful 56% said they’d buy another O2. That illustrates a big fall from grace for i-mate, who now makes its own devices instead of rebranding HTC models. But it’s the same old story for O2.
