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SquareTrade Study: iPhones more reliable than BlackBerry, Treo


Independent warranty provider SquareTrade has released a report showing that iPhones are more reliable than either BlackBerry or Palm Treo devices.

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.

Independent warranty provider SquareTrade has released a report showing that iPhones are more reliable than either BlackBerry or Palm Treo...
 

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November 12 2008 at 3:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
wako

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.

November 09 2008 at 4:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fritz Laurel

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...

November 09 2008 at 12:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Fritz Laurel's comment
Steven Fisher

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. :)

November 09 2008 at 3:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fritz Laurel

That's funny. It happens so infrequently that I've always attributed it to the device. Maybe I should look within....

November 09 2008 at 4:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daneel

Another nail in the coffin of the established smartphone market. Bye bye Palm and RIM.

November 09 2008 at 8:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Daneel's comment
Andrew

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.)

November 09 2008 at 11:27 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
grull27

16% failure rate on the Treos?! Wtf?! It's like the Xbox 360 all over again.

November 09 2008 at 8:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Cal

No surprise on the Treos, I used to have one and lurk in some treo forums Palm quality control was never great.

November 09 2008 at 3:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff

That's great news to hear as I bring my iPhone back to the store tomorrow because it doesn't receive incoming calls occasionally.

November 09 2008 at 2:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
adam

It seems to me that this does not account for phones that are serviced by apple themselves which is more likely to happen.

November 09 2008 at 12:02 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to adam's comment
TuxToaster

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.

November 09 2008 at 1:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
robb

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.

November 09 2008 at 2:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
csh

It looks to me like this is no great win for iPod.

A nearly 6% failure rate is pretty dismal for almost any device.



November 08 2008 at 11:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to csh's comment
Brian

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.

November 08 2008 at 11:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
surya narayan singh

all about future version of Apple’s iPhone.
http://snsays.com/1858/iphone-3g-tethering/

November 08 2008 at 10:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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