Study Finds iPhone Twice As Reliable As BlackBerry

An anonymous reader writes "As reported at TechCrunch, 'The iPhone is twice as reliable as the BlackBerry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds. SquareTrade, which sells extra warranties for cell phones and other devices, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. The malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the BlackBerry and 16.2 percent for the Treo.' The full report (pdf) can be found at the SquareTrade site."

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[gyrogeerloose]

perhaps having the latest and greatest object of the year inspires people to treat the phone with a little more care?

Not in my case. I've dropped my iPhone 3G several times, including a three-foot fall onto a hard surface--twice. The shiny bezel got a little scratched but the phone works fine.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[mewshi_nya]

Basically, having dealt with SquareTrade (they're actually a pretty decent company, by the way), anything that causes the phone to stop working normally, such as broken screen, broken keyboard, broken battery, broken... well, anything that can't be fixed by the user.

Re:did the study only measure reliability?

[rnaiguy]

Puppies

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[linumax]

If you bother to read the report (yeah I know this is Slashdot) you'd get the answer:

We divided reported malfunctions into the following problem categories:

• Software / Features. Includes operating system lockups, frozen applications, voice recognition software, etc.
• Battery Problems. Primarily batteries that fail to hold a charge.
• Bluetooth / Camera / Accessories. Includes functional components that are part of the handset.
• Antenna / Hardware / Casing. Includes all physical integrity issues.
• Screen / Keypad / Touchpad. Includes burn-in, screen spots, dead pixels, and touch screen dead spots.
• Call Issues. Includes outbound calling, call reception, poor call quality, dropped calls and microphone issues.
• Power Issues. Includes power connectors, powering on/off, and inability to stay on.
• Other. Other issues, not categorized above.

And, regarding the level of care, and how accident prone iPhones are:

As it turns out, an iPhone user is more than twice as likely to experience an iPhone failure due to accidental damage than through a handset malfunction. An astounding 12% of iPhone owners have reported a failure due to accidental damage at the 1 year mark, and nearly a quarter of all iPhone owners can be expected to have their phone fail from an accident by the end of 2 years. This accident rate is higher than the 9% accident rate reported on all other phones by one-third...

Personally, I see and use the iPhone as an appliance, not as a platform, which is what a real Smartphone is. iPhone is not in the same league, and comparisons of this kind, while informative to some extent fail to provide any significant insights.

Re:bias.

[catwh0re]

actually, the apple consumers are usually very pedantic about their product and rightly so, the product is usually marketed as a premium item and costs a little more than the competitor.

So far even minor issues found in the iphone have been turned into a maelstrom of users, fanboys and haters all cashing in their feedback. There are people actively petitioning the iPhone for the following: Canadian pricing, the autocorrection feature having a disable switch, iphone unlocking/drm, 3rd party application NDAs, iphone in china & other providers, chrome for iphone, mms, 802.1x NACS, etc etc.

The blackberry is not getting anywhere near this much attention, petitions for the blackberry are aimed at the service providers disablement of a particular BB feature.

However all this vocal activity is a good thing for apple, as it gives them ways they can improve their product.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[dreamchaser]

Yep, I've seen the same thing many times. That was my point. I'd say a sizeable minority of Blackberry 'failures' are people angling to upgrade to the latest greatest model.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[Anonymous Coward]

With 3G Smartphones being so commonplace these days is Blackberry even relevent anymore?

Yes. The Blackberry platform remains the best mobile data system by far. Strong encryption, fully audited, free dev kits, no restrictions on what you do with it, push email, strong control of the devices by central IT policy, and outstanding integration with Exchange, Notes or GroupWise. Even supports PGP or S/MIME email for additional paranoia.

Unlike the iphone or googlephone, no one can remove apps from your blackberry (aside from your IT people).

Now, you might not be interested in all these features, but nothing else comes close.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[spyowl]

Don't get me wrong, I have a Blackberry and I like it; but let's not start giving each other blowjobs just yet:

no restrictions on what you do with it

Can't do VoIP apps - restricted by RIM.

outstanding integration with Exchange...

Purchase/licensing and maintenance of a separate Blackberry enterprise server required. Note that iPhone integrates w/Exchange without requiring you to license/maintain this component.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[PCM2]

Really?

Boss: Did you get my email?

Me: Not yet, I just got in.

Boss: I sent it at 9pm last night.

Me: Ah, that must be it. I left at 6. So what's up?

Is that so hard? In my experiences, bosses might expect all kinds of things, but rational people generally have a pretty good grip on what is reasonable to expect and what is not -- unless you give them other ideas.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[linhux]

iPhone uses SSL for IMAP by default, and I'd be surprised if the Exchange connection isn't encrypted as well. Most Exchange users will use the built-in VPN support to access their Exchange e-mail. That said, you are probably right in that RIM is the only player in the enterprise, but "end-to-end encryption" seems like a bad example.

Re:Speaking as an iPhone user...

[BitZtream]

Speaking as an iPhone user, WTF are you doing that causes your phone to crash so much? I have some problems with safari, but other than that it works fine.

It checks an imap mailbox with at least a hundred folders, and several hundred messages in the inbox itself at any given time, I use the clock for alarms, cal for future events, sms very lightly, a couple pages of downloaded apps and it just works.

Today was the first day where I've had a real problem, and you better believe I was on the phone with AT&T to resolve it instantly. Sadly it is a real problem and it looks like it has to go back for servicing due to some sort of call connection problem. This is my second iPhone, the first of which was stolen (due to my own stupidity mind you), and while the software has been a lot more laggy than the original, pre-2.0 firmware, it has up until today worked fine.

I'm sure some people may deal with failures more, but most people don't like the idea of paying that much for a device that doesnt work, especially with the 1st gen phones which were more up front plus contract costs.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you enjoying sucking your boss's cock on demand but the rest of us don't live to work.

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[Anonymous Coward]

Approximately 1 in 20 hard disks do fail in their first year. I have it from a family member who worked in sales for one of the largest HDD manufacturers in the world that HDDs have a 5% chance of randomly failing in any given year which equates to 1 in 20 in any year.

I call BS on this one

[Coraon]

I work for Rogers in Canada on the tech support line, we have to replace A LOT more Iphones then blackberries. People are just rougher of the blackberry, I would say that customer induced damage on the blackberry is higher, but as for catastrofic failure the iphone takes the cake. I've worked on every smart phone rogers has produced and trust me, the Iphone queue is the longest.

Re:Fine.

[limaxray]

Ummm, when you're a salaried employee, you are effectively owned by the company 24/7. You are paid to do a given job description, regardless of what hours you need to do them. If you don't like it, you can spend your life as a contractor and get paid by the hour - you'll make more, but you can be fired at a moments notice with no recourse. It's all a matter of what's more important to you - job security or not being owned by 'the man'?

Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY

[Asic Eng]

If you are really that important for your boss, then he won't fire you that easily either. You are correct of course, there are unreasonable managers around - however that doesn't mean you can never stand up for yourself. Most people (even managers) are not unreasonable. You need to make sure that you assert your rights - don't make it into a fight though, just state your position calmly.

Think about it - your manager's performance ratings depends usually on yours. If his team is not productive then he is seen to be a failure. If he needs to replace you, he needs to spend time finding a replacement - he loses the experience you have, he runs the risk not finding someone equally qualified. There could even be a hiring freeze on, and that means he'll be a manager of a smaller team. If he's interested in his career, that's something he wants to avoid - headcount looks good on his resume. You are not without leverage in this situation.