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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."
Sounds heavily biased.
There are plenty of people who would wait until there was more than one problem with their iPhone before calling it in for repairs. But those with a blackberry might be more quick to respond to problems.
Did the study really only count the number of times someone sent their phone in for repairs, or the actual defects in the hardware?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Not to mention that most Blackberry users have devices paid for by their employer. The majority of iPhone users buy their own phones.
I have and carry both a Blackberry for work, and an iPhone because I wanted something that wasn't under the control of IT overlords. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who carries a Blackberry in the default plastic holster and drops it onto the floor at least once every few weeks... and it's got nothing to protect it from that dive. My iPhone, however, being my personal property, does get better care. It's usually in a case in a pocket, and only small portions of its surface are directly exposed... I'm not surprised that iPhones fail less. People take far better care of them.
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.
In the first TFA the failures are seperated by like components/subsystems. The logically strange thing is that the catagory with the highest failure rate across all 3 brands is "screen/keypad/touchpad". I'd wait a couple more years for more reliable iPhone faulure data to be gathered, it's hard to compare one inoperable button with an erratic touchscreen(don't know about the treo, but iPhone alphanumerics must be entered with the touchscreen as opposed to the crackberry's button-keypad.
I'm willing to make that measurement for you in a highly standardized way, but I'm not sure what the SI units for "cuteness" are. Could you enlighten me on this?
Puppies
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.
Can't speak of iPhone - I can only say to BlackBerry.
In my company we have so called "standby support," when people are getting a BlackBerry from company and have to respond to customer calls.
The amount of abuse BlackBerry can survive is really impressive. Generally, BlackBerrys assigned to standby support pool last for 8-14 months. But the phones rarely have a quiet hour in their lives.
So my biased theory would be that BlackBerry and Treo are failing more because they are used in business more and thus are open to more abuse.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
My coworkers and I get our Blackberries through the firm, and you'd be surprised how many old-model Blackberries get dropped once the new models become available. "Only the partners have the new ones?" "Yeah. We're relying on attrition to wear down the associates' Blackberries." Next day. "I need a new Blackberry. I dropped mine."
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I actually think a major factor would be fewer points of failure. You have 3 buttons, one switch, the screen, the case, the chip and the battery. I would imagine the failure rate of highly used keyboard buttons on the blackberry would be much higher than the touchscreen.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
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?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Not to mention that most Blackberry users have devices paid for by their employer. The majority of iPhone users buy their own phones.
Regardless of who bought it, which would you spend more time protecting? Your personal entertainment device that lets you listen to music etc. or the virtual servant bell which forces you to check your email regularly out of hours and which few people use for personal calls.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the BlackBerry
To me that suggests the iphone is 94.4% reliable and the blackberry is 88.8% reliable. That's just me, though.
I record my sleeptalking
While no denying your comment, I doubt many companies like yours would be using extra warranty services like this. I am sure SquareTrade's statistics only includes those insured by them - most likely individuals and small businesses.
So the abuse by enterprise users likely does not come into these figures.
My coworkers and I get our Blackberries through the firm, and you'd be surprised how many old-model Blackberries get dropped once the new models become available. "Only the partners have the new ones?" "Yeah. We're relying on attrition to wear down the associates' Blackberries." Next day. "I need a new Blackberry. I dropped mine."
I had a horrible accident with a Blackberry and a prototype mass driver at the lab. When my supervisor offered to have it repaired I handed him a Dust Buster and pointed to a smudge on the wall.
If you stop and think about it, it makes a lot of sense that the blackberries /fail/ much more than iPhones.
The reason is because the blackberry is treated as a tool, more likely to be thrown around, and while it can probably handle being thrown around much better than an iPhone, but it'll break eventually. People who get an iPhone will carry it around in their little plastic cases, polishing it with a cloth after every conversation, and protect it with their life.
Also, the lack of mechanical parts (ie buttons) will make it fail slightly less...
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
An executive at my employer recently had to have his Blackberry replaced after his wife threw it against a wall while they were on vacation.
If you don't have an AT&T contract, you cannot get your iphone serviced. With that in mind, I'm sure many minor issues aren't sent in for repair and people simply learn to live with them.
For instance, my iPhone has, ever since I got it, had one dead speaker (the left one). But because I've been using prepaid sim card (AT&T) and I used a jail breaking program to activate my phone, Apple won't do anything for me about it. So, as far as they are concerned, my phone is working great. It's not a huge deal so I don't worry about it.
They don't specifically say you must have an AT&T contract to get warranty service, but it's more or less required via the other terms. They wont' service your phone unless its activated ("How can we see if it's working or not?). They won't service phones that aren't activated legitimately (at least not if they know about it). You MUST sign up for a contract to activate your phone (not actually true with the 3g, it'll apparently activate on a prepaid sim).
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.
That's the imperial measurement, the SI one is juvenile dog
I'm so completely used to random crashes to the main screen, random complete lockdowns, random freezes, dropped calls, you name it... that it'd have to take something pretty remarkable before I even realized it was a fault I could make a warranty claim over as opposed to just "buggy as usual" functioning.
Looking at the typical blackberry users who regard it as a critical piece of their god given right and duty to answer emails even when on the can... I'd imagine they're vastly less tolerant than iPhone users.
Most iPhone users I know, who haven't previously used Blackberries, are pretty happy with their iPhones. Just about every former Blackberry user I know who converted to an iPhone hates the thing's unreliability and wants to go back.
In short: Relying on reported failures doesn't always tell you which device is more reliable. It can just be an indicator of which user group is more tolerant.
I think its funny that I got modded flamebait despite it was a legit question! I could see how it could be interpreted as a troll but flamebait?
It's just I have found Blackberry to be a pain to maintain and just really expensive. Eventually we just went made do with Exchange, for push email in Exchange/Outlook mobile, that can be done (I dont know about Groupwise) and we were already paying for exchange to begin with. We just felt that was good enough so we phased out Blackberry and got everyone O2's, this was about 05 when smartphones were just starting to come out in the mainstream so the end users loved it (except the first model O2 XDA Atom's caused headaches) If you are paranoid with IT security and/or are a Notes shop I can see your point but for 90% of the market I would consider an Exchange shop to be "good enough".
Make SELinux enforcing again!
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.
Regardless of who bought it, which would you spend more time protecting? Your personal entertainment device that lets you listen to music etc. or the virtual servant bell which forces you to check your email regularly out of hours and which few people use for personal calls.
In all fairness, modern BlackBerry handsets do audio and video. Mine even has a 3.5mm headphone jack. Many also come equipped with cameras (although people who need to go places that don't allow cameras can get ones without). It's also good for surfing the Web, and although it comes equipped with a pretty decent mapping application, Google Maps is even better. As for personal calls, well, I really just don't enjoy being on the phone that much. But if I was somewhere away from home and I needed to make a phone call, I imagine pulling my BlackBerry out of my pocket, dialing a number, and holding it to my ear would be the simplest way to do it. Why wouldn't I?
What's more, all modern BlackBerry handsets have an Auto On/Off feature. If you're really so concerned, have it switch itself off at 6pm and come back on in the morning.
Breakfast served all day!
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!
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.
Either way, on in twenty iPhones and one in ten blackberry's? That's disgraceful. Could you imagine if one in ten intel chips failed within their first year? How about one in ten hard drives? How about one in ten cars/planes/boats?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
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.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
We had this same problem at the college I work at until the IT department changed up the way we handled this. Now if they "break" a phone we charge the department for phone replacements. You'd be surprised at how few managers of departments are willing to slice $200 off their budget to get a new shiny phone. Or if they do - I don't care, because it doesn't set any of my projects behind any longer.
Also, we initiated a two year rotation on phones - everyone gets a new one (the same model as the deans and executives) every two years. That cut down on the envy-breakage considerably.
Your tax payer dollars hard at work...