Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, iPhone
SquareTrade Study: iPhones more reliable than BlackBerry, Treo
The report, titled "iPhone More Reliable than BlackBerry, One Year In", analyzes failure rates for more than 15,000 new cell phones covered by SquareTrade warranties. SquareTrade found that after one year of ownership, iPhone owners were half as likely as BlackBerry owners to have a phone failure, and one-third as likely as Treo owners. After 12 months, slightly over 16% of Treo owners had experienced a failure, while just less than 12% of BlackBerry owners had their smartphone die on them. Only 5.6% of iPhone owners had a critical failure.
SquareTrade's report also shows the types of failures most common for the various devices. The iPhone's Achille's Heel appears to be the touchscreen, while other devices saw problems with keyboards, software, and call quality.
When it comes to problems not caused by handset malfunctions, the iPhone is much more prone to accidental damage. 12% of iPhone owners reported failure due to dropping accidents, which SquareTrade attributes to the small size and slippery case of the iPhone.
Apple has made no comment on the report.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
surya narayan singh said 10:33PM on 11-08-2008
all about future version of Apple’s iPhone.
http://snsays.com/1858/iphone-3g-tethering/
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csh said 11:37PM on 11-08-2008
It looks to me like this is no great win for iPod.
A nearly 6% failure rate is pretty dismal for almost any device.
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Brian said 11:46PM on 11-08-2008
Sounds to me like you're not too familiar with consumer electronic failure rates.
If 94% of your units work through the first year, then you're doing awfully well.
adam said 12:03AM on 11-09-2008
It seems to me that this does not account for phones that are serviced by apple themselves which is more likely to happen.
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Michael Jones said 1:40AM on 11-09-2008
My thoughts exactly. If this only covers SquareTrade warranties, that sounds to me like it would only be covering devices sold through a means in which SquareTrade applies (i.e. eBay auctions, *possibly* a carrier if they use them, but unlikely). So unless they are analyzing Apple's return data, they are not really getting an accurate showing.
In my experience, most of the problems had with the iPhone (both personally and from what I've seen by others) has been when the phone gets bricked -- just stops working entirely, for no reason at all. Another common one is the screen getting physically broken, but I wouldn't say that really counts as a device failure unless it cracks by itself.
robb said 10:37AM on 11-09-2008
Presumably Square has a certain number of iPhones under warranty contract and they know how many of those break. It's a sample, not the entire population of iPhones, but there's no reason to suspect that the ones covered by Square are any more or less likely to break than those covered by Apple.
Jeff said 2:04AM on 11-09-2008
That's great news to hear as I bring my iPhone back to the store tomorrow because it doesn't receive incoming calls occasionally.
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Cal said 3:11AM on 11-09-2008
No surprise on the Treos, I used to have one and lurk in some treo forums Palm quality control was never great.
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grull27 said 8:35AM on 11-09-2008
16% failure rate on the Treos?! Wtf?! It's like the Xbox 360 all over again.
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daneel said 8:39AM on 11-09-2008
Another nail in the coffin of the established smartphone market. Bye bye Palm and RIM.
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Andrew T. said 11:27AM on 11-09-2008
Oh definitely!
With Wii's still outselling both 360's and PS3's (with really no problems, RROD etc.), after this holiday season, the Wii with put "another nail in the coffin" of the console market that was heavily dominated by Xbox and Playstation. Bye, bye Microsoft and Sony.
/sarcasm
(why do people have to post stupid comments like that? That's great you love your iPhone, it's a great device but please refrain from making stupid remarks.)
Fritz Laurel said 12:35PM on 11-09-2008
Haha -- they obviously haven't talked to me. It took me 5 replacements to get a stable iPhone. Interestingly enough, I'm also on my 5th xbox...
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Steven Fisher said 3:52PM on 11-09-2008
Some of us have that special touch with hardware, where it fails in spite of us being extra nice to it. I'm like that too. :)
Fritz Laurel said 4:19PM on 11-09-2008
That's funny. It happens so infrequently that I've always attributed it to the device. Maybe I should look within....
wako said 4:30PM on 11-09-2008
Im not surprised by this. Most iPhone users are willing to spend extra cash for cases and what not since they just spent a good hunk of cash. People will take good care of their phones when they spend 400 bucks on a phone. (1yr ago, there wasnt the 3G phone yet and it wasnt subsidized) On the other hand Blackberry phones are practically given out by either the carriers or by companies. It gets thrown around everywhere. You rarely see anyone with cases on their Blackberries.
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