The company's newest cell phone upgrade was announced yesterday and

The company's newest cell phone upgrade was announced yesterday, and executives are promising a much better model; this year's offering will include more storage capacity, longer battery life, and an improved camera.

A) are promising a much better model; this

B) promised a much better model; this

C) are promising a much better model than their current version; this

D) will be promising a much better model; this

E) are promising a much better model compared to last year's model, but this

MY ANALYSIS AND OFFICIAL EXPLANATION TIED TOGETHER

This question illustrates a good reason to inspect differences among or between answers.
Why do C and E include "a much better model THAN their current version" and "a much better model COMPARED to last year's model," respectively?

(A) may seem correct. That fact does not make (A) the best answer.

We are not looking for one correct answer. When we decide to keep an option, we should do so tentatively. GMAC relies on how inflexible the human mind can be.

We should try to compare something to something else. Idiomatically, better is almost always paired with than.

If some choices use "better THAN" (something) and other choices do not use "better THAN" (something), try to eliminate the latter.

This question contains an incomplete comparison.
Regarding the phrase "a much better model": much better than what?
Than this year's model?
Than the model that came out five years ago and that has not been changed?

Although readers can surmise that the company's executives are comparing the promised new model to AN old model,
this fact is not actually stated in options A, B, and D.

If X is "better," then X is better than Y.
A choice that names Y thereby names what X is being compared to. If that choice is grammatically correct, the comparison is complete.

Answer choice E correctly finishes the comparison but uses an awkward conjunction and redundantly includes compared to.

(1) "But" implies quite a bit of contrast. True, the new model will be slightly different. In the last part of the sentence, though, we are still talking a cell phone.

(2) "Better" and "compared to" are usually considered redundant. Better already implies comparison.

Compare to (C):
are promising a much better model than their current version; this

Is (E) better than (C)? No.

If you believe otherwise, check official questions. See how many correct answers use both "better" and "compared to." (None that I recall, although a few may exist.) Compare that number to correct answers that use "better than." (The second kind? There are many.)

Option C correctly states the comparison.

Abhishek009 rightly states:


Their does refer to the executives.
The pronoun reference is fine. Possessive pronouns must have antecedents that agree in number and kind.

The first clause is an independent clause, followed by comma + and
The second clause is an independent clause, with a new subject, namely, the executives.
Correct meaning: The executives are promising that their current version of the phone will be better.

Answer C.

GKomoku - best answer. Nice work. Kudos!

generis I hope you are doing good !!
My question pertains to the pronoun reference ... the antecendent of "theirs" is "executives"
Though i totally agree that there has to be in most cases a clear comparison (in this case better than what?) , but the pronoun reference is objectionable
The company has "models" and not the executives

My questions :
1. Is it necessary that the comparison should be clear in the given sentence?? Can it be implicit even when there is no such hint/reference to make the implicit part acceptable

2. Is it acceptable to consider that the pronoun reference in such cases can refer to a person when it actually needs to refer back to the company / the entity that actually makes the product??

I understand that pronoun ambiguity is not a hard rule to be followed on GMAT but , is it the same with PRNOUN reference ?? As far as i hve learned, the pronoun antecedent should be meaningful
@VeitasPrepBrain VeritasKarishma Please respond
I second Skywalker18 view on this one.

I noticed that some people chose C because of the "than". However, the clause after the semicolon also has comparison but doesn't have "than"!

Some people might argue that it is compared to "their current version" in C, but IMO, they do not compare.

MartyTargetTestPrep daagh Could some experts explain this? Thank you so much!

IMHO (C), theirs here clearly refers to the " executives "

IMO B

The company's newest cell phone upgrade was announced yesterday, and executives are promising a much better model; this year's offering will include more storage capacity, longer battery life, and an improved camera.

A) are promising a much better model; this
Announcement on upgrade was made yesterday and executives promise was made during the announcement. Hence both should be in the past

B) promised a much better model; this
correct, Both tenses are in the past

C) are promising a much better model than their current version; this
Same as ''A'' also an upgrade happens over the current version hence use of current version is redundant

D) will be promising a much better model; this
''Will be'' is in future tense while ''announcement'' was made in past

E) are promising a much better model compared to last year's model, but this
''But'' is used to denote contrast. No contrast is present in the sentence

The pronoun 'their' refers to executives, but OA(C) seems illogical as it seems that we are talking about the current version of executives. The relevant part of option C is as follows-

executives are promising a much better model than their current version.

On replacing the pronoun 'their'--> executives are promising a much better model than executives' current version.

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma , other experts - please enlighten

While it is possible to interpret the sentence in the way in which you describe, it is also possible to interpret "their current version" as referring to "the executives' current version of the phone."

I think you have to give the sentence the benefit of the doubt in a situation like this one and go with the interpretation that makes sense rather than the one that is completely nonsensical.

That having been said, we can agree that the structure of the comparison in (C) is awkward and not quite logical. Something along the lines of the following would be better:

"executives are promising a model much better than their current version"

MartyTargetTestPrep

I agree with you

In option C, 'their' makes the sentence seem like comparing previous model to the current version of the executives; seems illogical at the moment

The source of the question is not official; Therefore, i dont think I should rely on such an ambiguous sentence!

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