As a guy who has worked on cars and many motorized things since I was seven, I realized CR was full of crap from their auto recommendations as well.
For years, CR has slammed US made autos whilst singing the praises of all things Japanese. Anyone who has worked on Toyota or Suzuki auots knows that it is perfectly possible for the Japanese to produce lemons as well.
I’m not a fan of CR either they do miss a lot of things. Like Toyota’s that fail to stop :-)
But when they do catch an issue they are typically right. I bet CR would have gave the iPhone 4 a thumbs up if they didn’t know about this issue. But since they heard about it they were sure to test for it and they confirmed it. This doesn’t mean the test was bad or their results wrong. Just that CR still sucks because they don’t find issues on their own.