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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."
We divided reported malfunctions into the following problem categories:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don't get me wrong, I have a Blackberry and I like it; but let's not start giving each other blowjobs just yet:
Can't do VoIP apps - restricted by RIM.
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.
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.
Breakfast served all day!