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Hardware Running Android Fails More Than iPhone, BlackBerry Hardware
hazytodd writes "Repairs to Android smartphones cost wireless carriers $2 billion per year according to a new year-long WDS study that tracked 600,000 support calls around the globe. Android's popularity and the introduction of a number of low-cost smartphones has put a strain on the wireless business model, WDS noted in its report. 'Deployment by more than 25 OEMs and lower-cost product coming to market is leading to higher than average rates of hardware failures and, in turn, return and repair costs.'"
Do they just spontaneously combust, or are people abusing a piece of electronics until they break? My G1 is still working and it's taken a beating, but I upgraded long ago.
While on the flip side, I dropped my first gen iPhone into a puddle of water and it broke immediately.
It couldn't be someone who has an axe to grind on Android phones, no?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
How many Apple products had to have screens replaced, batteries, antennas, foul, filth, foul, crud...
Even though they're overly expensive, they're just as unreliable and in need of repair as the lower cost alternatives.
Would have been better to say that Android phones cost as much as iPhones and less than Blackberries to maintain/repair.
Of course, with more Android phones on the market than iPhones and Blackberries combined, it would probably skew the cost analysis.
Cheap stuff breaks, who knew?
Seriously, WTF slashdot?
You lower a product price to impulse buy territory but then lock the buyer into a two year contract. I know dozens of people who will brick their phone on purpose in hopes they'll get upgraded. Especially those that get the handset insurance.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What a garbage article.
An Android phone is not the same as an Apple or Blackberry phone. Google just makes the software. Apple and Blackberry make their own hardware.
Therefore you can't really say "Android phones have a high rate of defect". More accurately, you could say "Low-end no-name brand Android phones for that cost under $100 have a high rate of defect". High-end Samsung or HTC Android phones are just as good as their Apple or Blackberry counterparts.
Low-end phones have existed forever, and they've always had more technical issues. They just never had a high-end operating system. Since Android is free you can get it on even the cheaper phones. This is a good thing because it allows cheaper phones to have top-of-the-line software on a budget price.
It's no wonder that if you search for the study all you find is links to this and similar articles about this bogus study, but no references to the company or the studies themselves. Obviously a paid interest study.
Sadly, even skimming the article I didn't see any data by manufacturer of android devices or, even better, by individual model. That information would have been quite useful.
"Repairs to Android smartphones cost wireless carriers $2 billion per year"
many iPhone repairs are paid for by the User. Brittle screen, battery replacements etc.
The title implies Android is the problem, when the article states that this isn't an Android problem...its a crappy phone problem. Just another hater trying to get attention.
What does this story have to do with Android? If someone sells a cheap phone, then it's a cheap phone regardless of what OS is on it. And just for the record, our company has a mix of Android and iPhones and we have had more issues with iPhones! And don't get me started with Black Berry, most people I know are glad they ditch their BB phones!
nobody repairs gadgets, when they break them they buy a new one, if its under warranty then it gets replaced for a new one, if its out of warranty then its too old
Your iPhone break? Your options are get a new one or get a new one.
A wide variety of manufacturers will tend to include some of lower quality.
Buyer beware, or just pay extra and get the Apple. (Apple hardware ain't perfect either.)
I'm a contributing member of society. Hard work is over rated.
Oh great, here come the AC trolls...and the resulting flame war.
cheaper devices (designed cheaper) with otherwise similar performance specs fail more often.
What would be interesting would be how high-end android devices from brands with a brand image compare to the iphone.
Look at http://www.wds.co/docs/controlling-the-android.pdf
>Repairs to Android smartphones cost wireless carriers $2 billion per year
Since when did wireless carriers repair smartphones? They just send them back in gross to the hardware maker for a refund on the next batch. $2 billion seems really high for mailing costs.
I'm not seeing conclusive proof that either android or the phones are at fault here. Android phones are widely available, and low cost, but in particular they're introducing (more sensitive) touch screens to a market which probably hasn't traditionally taken good care of their phones. I'd guess nearly any inexpensive touch screen phone would have similar problems.
Funny that a study like this would come out at the same time as Apple's battery problems were exposed. Finding out who sponsored the study could be significant.
Everyone knows you don't repair Apple hardware. You buy a new iThing.
My company home page
Take all those devices that Android "breaks" on and install iPhone/Blackberry OS on 'em
OH YEAH, THAT WON'T WORK
High-end Samsung or HTC Android phones are just as good as their Apple or Blackberry counterparts.
I do notice that you don't include Motorola in this, which probably makes the statement more accurate since IMHO (and experience) the quality of Moto phones leaves much to be desired.
From my experience, if anything happens to your precious iPhone, the carrier won't fix it. At best you can buy a new one for the customary discount. Standard carrier service and warranty (paid one) for other phones fixes much more issues and therefore costs the carriers money, much of which (if not all) they get from the subscribers.
It's like saying that PC hardware running Linux breaks more often.
It the business model and slow/nonexistent updates. The hardware doesn't improve _that_ much, but droiders who are good about keeping their phones charged also see slowdowns over time from extra processes running backgrounded while idiots like me that let their phone go dead once in a while (ok, quite often) get the processes reset when the phone shuts down and end up without the sluggishness. These proactive users remember how fast their phone was when they bought it and think the must just need a new one. I call it the windows registry effect.
Made in China
Hardware running android? Isn't that a rather broad category? I mean Apple and RIM make their own hardware so comparing them makes sense. But comparing two hardware companies to a dozen or more companies that all use the same software? That seems like a rather useless statistic. Name brands vs generic brands, was there ever any doubt?
all other things being equal, would one expect the more useful tool to fail more or less quickly?
I wonder how many of these "hardware failures" were due to users attempting to root the devices and install custom ROM's? Hardware makers may want to consider making their devices more accessible or providing the user an easier way to run custom ROM's on the devices. From a Vendor perspective it's pretty much impossible to determine a truly dead phone from one that's had a bad software flash on it. Many don't even care and just replace the phone rather than fight with the consumer.
It's kind of silly that Hardware vendors want to retain their "iron grip" on the hardware so firmly they are willing to pay out of their own pockets when users brick their phones trying to regain control of hardware that THEY OWN!
So let me get this straight.
They take a free OS, put it on shit hardware, charge through the nose for it, screw up the OS with their own "Image-engineering", load it down with subsidized crap apps, leave no room for the user to do much with their phone, and when their crap breaks....they blame the OS....
Did I get that right? Because I'm fairly sure HTC and others don't say, "Hey this new handset will be an Android, let's fuck it up so Apple and others look good."
This can be blamed solely on the carriers.
Give it to those you hate.
Does reading about a vast army of cheaply produced, fault-prone commodity hardware from multiple OEM vendors running an OS from a single software vendor competing against Apple's solely owned and closed product line give anyone else a sense of deja vu?
It's PC vs Mac all over again. PCs dominated because they were much cheaper than Macs. PCs failed more than Macs because they were much cheaper than Macs. PCs drove the massification of personal computing because they were much cheaper than Macs. The same dynamic will occur with Android and iDevices.
I heard hardware running Windows has a higher rate of failure than that of Apple machines. Point being, yeah.. android is a commodity OS, so why tie it to a story about hardware from a range of manufacturers who very likely offer a range of phones all of which run the same OS. In the days of eMachines and the like was Windows the focus of faulty hardware manufacturers?
Yay another flamebait article!
The article states that since low end "smartphones" are being installed with Android it is costing carriers more in warranty and repair costs. It has nothing to do with the Android platform and is more of a side effect where the cheap manufacturers elected to go with Android over another OS.
Real Life Angry Birds!
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So that means an end to the stories and claims and general nerd mirth about how 'Android phones are now the largest market segment'?
If all you offer is one model at a time (Apple, no capacity differences don't truly count as a different model - radio differences may) it's really easy to make a tried and true hardened product. That being said Apple has been screwing up it's one product last couple of generations, granted not in a way that can't be handled.
Blackberry OS products, though more diverse than Apple's product line, are still very narrow in offerings.
Anyone who can slap together a few components can make an Android phone.
Android is truly a buyers market. It is up the the buyer to do all the research required to buy an Android device. Sticking with a few vendors is usually a safe way to do it. Sure you can probably find a really cheap phone from China from a manufacturer you've never heard of that looks like an iPhone, runs Android, and advertises 1,000 features, but you know deep down in your heart you probably should go with something by HTC instead. The difference between the compared groups is that Android, being free, allows the last guy to exist. In a true unencumbered market you're always going to have your sleeze bag bottom of the barrel stuff, then you're going to have your sexy Cadillac stuff. My EVO is over a year old and I don't see myself giving it up for a different model for at least six months, probably more, however if I were to have bought the budget "free" phone from any carrier at the same time, Android or not, there's a pretty good chance I would be growing tired of it by now, if it still worked at all.
This is no different than the way I always buy Wrangler Carpenter pants for work even though I could just as easily go to a discount store and buy random generic brands. I've done the latter, and sometimes I've gotten really good pants that last, and sometimes I got trash. Apple only sells the "Wrangler" product and wont allow anyone else to produce the equivalent. Blackberry only allows the Wrangler and a couple of others like Levi and Carhart. Android says "Make em all!".
These findings don't detract from Android. In my book it actually uplifts Android. What if all I wanted was a cheap but descent phone, not for making phone calls but for my kid to play Angry Birds on and listen to her Chipmunk albums? Chances are she's going to drop anything I get her in the toilet eventually so quality isn't the highest priority. I can get a bargain basement Android phone that doesn't break the bank. With Apple I have to mortgage her bicycle and LPS collection to buy an iPhone and lets face it, Blackberry isn't the best choice for Angry Birds. (Truth is I gave my kid my old iPhone 3G, but I seriously considered getting her an Android phone from Cowboom.com instead)
Articles like this that intentionally overlook the obvious are mostly FUD.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
This one is simple, guys. Google will sell an Android license to anyone. Apple and RIM make their own hardware. They have a stake in the reputation of their company. Consumers are smart enough to realize that a Google phone failing is not Google's fault, it's the fault of the manufacturer of the hardware. It's giving the manufacturer's a bad name, not Google.
There's plenty of junky Android phones with junky hardware on the market. That being said, there's some bleeding edge Android phones out there with incredible hardware. It goes back to the old saying, "You get what you pay for."
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
My brother in law when through four or so Motorola Droids before finally giving up. I suspect that when your first unit fails, the ones the carriers replace it with are refurbs, leading to a common death spiral. (He may have went with a refurb to start with, to save $$) Yes, he switched to an iPhone, and it has worked ever since.
Also, if you lump all Android phones into the same category, there's some real garbage in there. It's unfair to categorize a device from Samsung or Motorola with something from First Taipei Telecom.
This is an unavoidable problem with an open platform. There is nothing Google can do to prevent this. That's the failure: these are hardware failures, and if you could load Blackberry OS or iOS on those devices, you'd have the same problem. It's like blaming the maker of pipes or wiring on failures when installed in crummy houses by crummy installers.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Generally speaking, when your market share increases, so do the amount of devices you have in service. The more devices you have in service, the higher the percentage of failed devices. It's math, not magic.
http://www.eurodroid.com/2011/04/26/stats-android-now-10-ahead-of-iphone-in-us-smartphone-market-share/
http://www.techi.com/2011/08/android-ios-approach-70-combined-smartphone-market-share/
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Why would you think that? The findings don't seem to be that negative on Android (despite the negative spin being given in many outlets.) I mean, even the part quoted in TFS notes that the higher failure rates on Android phones are due to the fact that there are more low-cost Android phones available.
Its not really surprising that the failure rate across all devices of an OS that is available on lower-end devices as well as high-end devices would be higher than ones that are only available on high-end devices.
It would be more interesting to see a failure rate comparison that controlled for the retail price of the device at introduction.
You know what is really missing from the Slashdot of old?
The Slashdot of old had real good trolls, not this lame half-baked attempt. I mean, when was the last time you ran across a troll comment half as funny as the Yoda Figurine troll. Why even the GNAA is only a shadow of it's former self.
We need some good solid trolls again, SharkLaser is trying, but failing pathetically. Dr.Bob was doing pretty good, but apparently lost interest. The best we have now are link farmers like the useless ForaFreeInternet.
C'mon trolls, step up to the plate and give it a swing.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Another case of misleading statistics...
The figures mentioned in the article are that 12% of the calls related to Android are hardware-related, vs. 7% for iPhones. From this, I could just as well draw any of the following conclusions:
a/ software problems take up a smaller portion of the issues related to Android phones than in iPhones; hence, Android phones are more user-friendly. -> headline: "Apple is losing out against Google on its traditional strength: user-friendliness"
b/ software problems take up a smaller portion of the issues related to Android phones than in iPhones; hence, assuming both user interfaces are more or less equally user-friendly, we can conclude that iPhone users are not as tech-savvy as Android users. -> headline: "iPhone users dumber than Android users, study shows"
What kind of reporting is this if they make blunt statements without ANY real basis to back things up.
The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can. -- Albertano of Brescia
I don't know how it costs them anything since people buy a new phone with the cost of their phone insurance every two years.
Ever tried to get a Verizon rep to admit that there was something wrong with your Fascinate? All they have to do is say "there's nothing wrong" and hang up on you. They know you're not going to take them to court.
The volume of calls and number of devices is needed for those numbers to mean anything.
Sure a higher percentage of Android calls involve hardware issues. That could be the case if:
1. The hardware does fail more.
2. The hardware fails less but there are also even fewer calls about software issues.
So the fact that phones made by god knows how many manufacturers, distributed by who knows how many carriers, that just happen to run the same operating system have an aggregate failure rate higher than the other two smart phone vendors who produce their own hardware and software, and have a MUCH smaller part of the overall market. This is like saying that windows computers have a higher rate of failure than than computers from HP that run Ubuntu. In other words, apples and oranges. If you want a functional comparison, compare aggrigate failure rates of android phones produced by one of the major manufacturers, (HTC, Moto, Samsung) to the failure rates of Iphones and BB's. Otherwise return the credits you claimed to have earned for taking any stats classes EVER.
Android phones can be had brand new for as little as $59 USD unsubsidized (no contracts etc). That's not a one-off, either. Of course there is going to be a slightly higher rate of failure when compared to $500+ devices.
There are expensive android devices out there as well but the article does not differentiate.
Dr.Bob was doing pretty good, but apparently lost interest. The best we have now are link farmers like the useless ForaFreeInternet.
Dr. Bob forgot what he was doing and posted under his normal account... the game was up after that. The troll that really had me intrigued was the 'end of the world' troll whose posts started out as semi-coherent ravings about the end times and degenerated into a bizarre and unintelligible screed about babies, the Georgia Stones and South Hillary or somesuch.
not this lame half-baked attempt
Sorry it's not up to your standards. I was tired from tongue fucking your mom's poop hole.
Seriously. I'd like to see your attempt. Especially after having to reach that deep to get to the stinky clam. I had to have 2 sherpas, gps, scuba gear and a jar of mayonnaise just to get close to the brown eye. Once I got to the holiest of holy, she was insatiable. I consider myself a professional ass wrangler, but she made me bring my A-Game.
You're also pretty damn close to the 1 million mark for your UID. That means you joined around 2006-7, you fucking poser.
BGR leans distinctly towards asininity. in this case, you can omit any mention of android and get a semantically equivalent article. heck, they even quoted the primary source as saying this!
flash: cheap hardware fails more than expensive hardware. wow.
followup: how much of the effect is because owners try harder to avoid damaging expensive hardware?
This is what happens when you compete on the basis of cost.
When it comes right down to it, there's not a lot to differentiate one Android phone from another. It's becoming a commodity market, and a phone buyer would be satisfied with any of several options. What would make someone choose one phone over another? Leaving out the fucktards who reflexively hate on Apple just because Apple doesn't place virgin tech-nerds on a pedestal, someone will choose one phone over another based upon:
That's about all there is.
If you have two phones with similar features, and one is cheaper than the other, you buy the cheaper phone. If you, the seller, want to not go out of business by losing money on every sale you have to reduce your cost of goods. Therefore, your build quality will suffer, and you end up with the situation the article describes.
If you have two phones with the same price, you'll buy the one with a better feature set. If you're packing more features into the same sale price, you're spending less on each feature. Therefore, to meet the price point, you're sacrificing quality. Once again, you end up with the described situation.
If you're choosing based upon carrier, and you're not buying the phone outright (i.e. you have a contract and a subsidized phone price) you have a limited selection. Since the carrier wants to maximize profit on a phone, they'll offer the models with the lowest wholesale cost. To meet that lower cost, the phone makers will cut corners. And... surprise, reliability suffers.
Therefore, as long as the phones are pretty much interchangeable from the user's point of view, price will loom large... and the price-race to the bottom will dominate everything else. Phone manufacturers aren't charities; they have to show a profit to stay in business. Therefore to meet lower prices, cost cutting must occur. This is what it means to exist in a commodity market with paper-thin margins, and to operate in a market where people are willing to buy crap.
Premium Android phones are just fine. The problem is that there are a lot of non-premium Android phones, and they get lumped in with the Nexus and Droid product lines. There's a bunch of no-name crap out there that is being pushed solely on the basis of the Android name, and it's ruining things for everybody involved.
Does everyone understand now why Apple doesn't participate in the market segments dominated by commodity items? Does everybody understand now why cheap Android phones break? Does everybody understand now why cheap Android phones exist at all? If you want quality, you MUST open your wallet. It costs money to make a good phone, and therefore it costs money to buy a good phone. Complaining at the top of your lungs doesn't make a good phone cheaper or a cheap phone better.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
After reading the article (and at times, it seems that the article is biased one way or the other. A rather interesting read from a technical stand-point). It is in no way commenting on the quality of the Android System or is it truly comparing Android vs Blackberry vs iOS vs Windows 7 (yeah, they list Windows 7 in the research, but it didn't make it to the writers page... Interesting).
The point and reason for the research was to analyze and report on Android as a platform and a supportable system. It identifies key characteristics in the serviceability of the Android (using other systems as a point of reference), and while they believe that the fragmentation (which they believe is the reason for the fact that 14% of all Android calls are hardware vs 7% and 6% of iOS and Blackberry), that factor does not outweigh the positive that such a model brings (pretty much the first paragraph in the report's summary).
Needless to say, with WDS posting it with such a poorly worded title, and the ability for other reviewers to lazily recap the title, and lead-in to the report (ok, they have 1 paragraph to represent a 17 page document, of which they selected to partially represent the hardware fault outline... Partially).
There are also several mis-quotes in the article that are rather telling.
e.g.:
WDS noted in its report. “Deployment by more than 25 OEMs and lower-cost product coming to market is leading to higher than average rates of hardware failures and, in turn, return and repair costs.”
Actual report text (page 4): "Its use exploded and today the OS is deployed by more than 35 OEMs2 , offering an
accessible and customizable platform that has resonated with manufacturers and mobile operators alike."
-- These stats are not even in the report. There is a graph that represents amounts per type of issue, but they do not give hard numbers in the report and w/o the graph, you do not see that the stats are fairly balanced between device with each device having a specific high fault area, except android.
12.6% of all technical support calls related to Android in the study were for hardware failures related to the touchscreen, buttons, speakers, microphones and battery performance. Just 9.3% of Windows Phone, 8% of iOS calls and 5.5% of BlackBerry calls were related to hardware failures.
--
Actual report text (): "While Android deployments may show a higher propensity to hardware failures than rival OS platforms,
analysis of these hardware faults shows no principle defects on the platform; ie: the platform is not
predisposed to one particular hardware defect. Instead, the distribution of hardware faults against
weighted averages deviates by less than 1% in all categories. In this instance, Android actually benefits
from deployment across multiple reference designs and component variants. This means that the brand is
unlikely to be associated with a specific hardware shortcoming."
===
The rest of the article goes on to only quote the press release.
At least that's the way it looks to me...
You think there's no quid pro quo, you're nuts.
Droid builders 'keep costs down' by churning out product as fast as they can. Ensuring quality control on a device that absolutely, positively has to be delivered per the market cycle, that lasts until the next new-and-improved device is released, is a losing proposition, until 'the market' demands better. And that only happens when there is a source of reliable information. (Hello, Consumer Reports.) Marginal differentiation, conspicuous consumption and the all mighty spectre of 'Moore's Law' rule the product development cycle of the 'Smart' phone. And since the engineering takes place in Taiwan and China, but the decisions (in the U.S.) are made by the carriers, we get what we get and love it 'til our 2-year contract is up and we've been virally infected by next round of hype.
Blackberry was ahead of the power curve until Apple met Steve Jobs level of expectation for user interface design, and Google is providing the same type of ecosystem that Microsoft fostered in the PC arena. Crapware + generic hardware = a cheaper platform upon which many companies exercise their freedom to fail (er... innovate, yeah... that's the ticket).
Things I'd like to know include, whether there's a difference in quality of product from manufacturer to manufacturer and whether failure rates of Tart Phones in the U.S. are different than those sold in European or Asian markets (excluding black market knock-offs). I imagine that where the carrier's service is sold separately from the hardware, phone sellers have a different type relationship with manufacturers. They are certainly governed by an entirely different set of regulation and expectation.
Most Apple people I know take their busted Apple products straight to an Apple (or the phone company's) store without calling ahead of time, unless it's one of those crazy stores that needs an appointment.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This article is so misleading. They are forgetting to factor in market share and using the percentages of support calls directly. Android has the most support calls about hardware failure? Shocking consider it has the highest market share.
"12.6% of all technical support calls related to Android in the study were for hardware failures related to the touchscreen, buttons, speakers, microphones and battery performance. Just 9.3% of Windows Phone, 8% of iOS calls and 5.5% of BlackBerry calls were related to hardware failures."
Android has a 38.9% global smartphone market share (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219811/Android_is_smartphone_king_globally_tough_fight_on_for_No._2_spot) thus adjusting to its market share gives a support call to market share ratio of .32 (lower being better). Windows 3.8%(2.44), apple 18.2%(.43), and black berry 14.2 ( .38). Thus, the conclusion of the article is that Android smartphones actually have the fewest percentage of hardware support calls with windows coming in dead last .and apple 3rd behind blackberry.
This seems pretty straightforward in my experience; people break their iPhones all the time, but they don't repair them, they upgrade to the latest model. I've actually seen people purposely manhandle the thing to justify and upgrade.
I owned my Droid for a year before the digitizer gave up the ghost. Actually, it's most likely the ribbon that connects the digitizer to the main board, but I haven't had the time or tools handy to get in and fix it. Supposedly it's a very common flaw. Mind you, my wife and I have the same model and both of our volume buttons no longer respond, and the mini USB port on both phones is very particular about cable placement. As far as I can tell, the metal has deformed to the point that it no longer holds the plug in contact with the...contacts. This is after pretty careful use of both phones, and no physical damage.
On the other hand, I've heard good things about HTC, and used one as a backup successfully for a while. Felt much more solid than the Motorolas. No one I know has ever had a problem with an iPhone, and I never had a problem with my Blackberry Curve.
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My HTC G2 got an update this morning. It is the 3rd or 4th update I have received since I got it. That puts it just about on par with the 3GS that I have. Of course, none of this matters when you consider that Apple is still selling 3GSes and HTC is still selling G2s. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about desktop OSes, cell phones, or buggy whips. When discussing the longevity of support, you start counting from the day the product is last sold. Not the day that it is first sold.
LET THE FUD BEGIN!
Oh wait... I see these kinds of articles knocking android all the time... except they're not actually about android.
I love these articles shilling for MS and Apple, glorious.
-
and what I mean ss : How can it be that someone who doesn't understand the difference between hardware and software be writing the stupid articles?
Android can go on a very wide amount of hardware. some cheap, some expensive. Of COURSE there are more HARDWARE issue. Stop comparing software to hardware.
Anything for the cause, huh?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So... what this study is telling me is that, if I want my phones to be considered reliable, I can just create a mobile operating system that's so confusing and has so many software problems, that any hardware calls I DO get will be dwarfed by the sheer quantity of calls from people stymied by crashing programs and bad interface designs, and will therefore have a lower percentage of hardware-related calls.
I suppose it's too much to ask for something like support calls per thousand units sold, broken down by problem type?
-- Joren
I can't understand how every now and then I see those comparisons between Android, iPhone and Blackberry (and in some cases which don't apply here, also Windows Mobile devices or Windows Phones).
Of course Android hardware fails more than all the others. First, because the number of devices running Android is much higher than the number of any of the OS ran by the others, thus, the number of silly users is also much higher.
Secondly, Android isn't developed for a specific device and delimited type of H/W parts. It runs on things from cheap chinaphones and chinatablets, to expensive HTCs, Samsungs, [your favorite expensive brand here], etc.
The fact that Android runs on cheap hardware increases greatly the number of silly people using it, at least IMHO.
The fact that Android is open source makes it be that there are a lot of people hacking it: rooting, custom ROMs, dangerous APKs, etc.
While:
iOS only runs on certain Apple devices, and nothing more. (iOS is also a walled garden, but that's another topic) This fact does have its advantages for the maker (Apple), for the vendor (if people want iOS they must buy an expensive iDevice), and for the"average consumer" (specific support for the OS of their device, since their device is the only one running that OS).
You can hack iOS (jailbreak), but I'm guessing these jailbroken devices won't enter the statistics, since AFAIK Apple will refuse to repair them under warranty.
About BlackBerry phones and their OS, we can say basically the same as for Apple: the OS is made for the H/W they run, the H/W they run is made for the OS. There isn't any non-BlackBerry device running the BlackBerry OS (there wouldn't be any point in that, anyways).
Windows Mobile runs (or ran) on a wide variety of hardware, but it wasn't open source and nowhere as hackable as Android. Plus, it never had much market share in the new era of smartphones (the post-iPhone era), and there have never been so many dumbasses using it as Android has. The best you can do when it comes to custom WM ROMs is adding/removing apps and upgrade the S/W to a more recent version, but you can't really change the core of the OS. Plus, you can't (read: it's very hard/takes a lot of effort) port WM to a entirely new device yourself. Alternatively, you can port Android to a WM device. On this field, I talk by experience, I own a Windows Mobile device.
Windows Phone is run on a more select hardware, it still has a very small market share when compared to iOS or Android, and it's as closed (or even more closed than) iOS. I don't think there are many "average consumers" using Windows Phone, but when/if they come, I think the platform is walled enough for they not to do shit with their H/W or S/W. Microsoft can regulate who manufactures Windows Phones, where Google can't control who manufactures Android devices because of the license under which Android is released (the most they can control is what can access the Android Market and the like). Furthermore, Windows Phones must obey certain guidelines (e.g. three buttons at the bottom: back, WinKey and search, plus dedicated camera button) where Android devices do not: they won't be officially recognized by Google, but they still run Android.
I think this explains why H/W running Android "fails more", and also why there are so many devices running outdated versions of Android: some of them aren't capable of (in the same way that old iPhones don't run recent versions of iOS), for some of them the maker just stopped caring, if they even cared at any time. Plus, Android upgrades for a device are usually not as advertised as iOS upgrades: some customers simply choose not to care about upgrading (and some care, and prefer to stay with versions that work for them), some don't even know what Android is, talk to them about a software update. It's not like you connect your device to iTunes and it asks you to update; in many Android phones, specially cheapo ones, you have to do research yourself on which updates are available and on how to updat
http://gbl08ma.com
Wireless carriers try not and sell phones, they sell service plans. The amount of money a carrier can make is higher if the customer has a phone that requires a data plan. To keep the cost of entry low for the end user, the carriers push phones at an as low cost as possible. I.e. the less the consumer has to spend on the phone, the more likely they are to subscribe to a more expensive plan.
Generally there is a correlation between the cost of a product and its durability - the less it costs the more likely it is to break. To say that this costing the wireless industry a lot of money is disingenuous - they are making their money by billing people for data plans - plans that many of these people probably would not have purchased if the phones were better made and cost more. The cost of the phones and the phone repair is built in to the monthly subscription fee.
Because moving to Linux on the same hardware was pretty much crash-free for me.
In the meantime, another unrelated study has found that hardware running OS X fails less often than hardware running Windows or Linux. Makers of the study have already requested additional funds to purchase more OS X hardware in order to investigate this unexplained phenomenon.
In other news, sky is blue except where it's cloudy - who'd have thought? Stay tuned!
What with the shaking and the accidentially dropping phones into toilets etc. ... He may have been onto something there...
:-)
(I kid, I kid)
sig? Oh, that sig...
This is kind of funny, considering I've personally had to fix 4 different iPhones in my lifetimes. Not to mention the amount of problems I've heard about iPhones in general. Only time I've ever heard of problems with Android phones is ones by LG, sometimes Samsung, and rooted phones. And if it's rooted, well, you took a risk anyway. Maybe if people would start taking a bit better care of their crap? My CDMA HTC Hero still works splendidly after 2 years of constant use.
what do people do with their phones - bounce them in the parking lot?
My Galaxy S is just fine brand new shape after more than a year.
I have a Huawei Android phone and... god. It's pretty terrible. I miss my Nokia.
I would say the majority of them. The reason I say this is because BSODs are extremely rare now, while they used to be common on virtually all Windows systems. That is a pretty strong indicator that Windows, and thus MS had a pretty serious level of responsibility in BSODs of previous versions of Windows.
Someone looks a little touchy today.
In light of Android owning 45% of the US market share, this should not come as a surprise really
Reasonable conclusion: you cannot predict the reliability of a phone based on what OS it runs. Continue using build quality, manufacturer and components to evaluate the reliability of phones.
If you see a phone with an apple on a back it's liable to be more reliable than a phone with a green robot on the back, on average, but now we're talking about branding, not OS. The more people try to turn Android into a consumer brand, the more it muddies the water on these issues, but Android people feel a need to conflate Android into a consumer brand, because they want to characterize Android mobile products and Apple mobile products as being in some sort of zero-sum conflict among peers, when they aren't peers and aren't for the most part in a zero-sum competition.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
In light of Android owning 45% of the US market share, this should not come as a surprise really
Clearly you don't understand what Average means. All the numbers are normalized to number of sold units.
number of failure/number of units
It was PCs then, it's phones now. Android is the Windows 3.1/95 of phones. It's good enough, wildly popular, runs on all kinds of hardware, lots of options. Apple is closed garden, all-in-one-experience. Wonder how much of the overall history will repeat itself.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
Did anyone do the math on this? They tracked 600,000 support calls and estimated repairs cost $2 billion. That's $3,333 per call. Um?
The first post just happens to be a Google Shill bashing Apple on an article that presents data against Android. Ain't that a funny coincidence... I'm sure. An advertising company paying people to comment on websites.... that's never happened before... never I say !
Android is just a phone OS. iPhone and Blackberry actually make their own phones. You can't blame Android for crappy hardware.
When you buy a cheap product, you don't usually expect a lot of life out of it. But maybe that's all you could afford at the time, and not everyone wants to throw credit cards at everything beyond their means.
The point which people should be seeing is that it's possible to create cheap Android products to begin with. There's no such thing as a cheap iPhone. So when your iPhone breaks, it's a lot bigger deal than some fifty or hundred dollar clunker that lasted you a year or so.
You can certainly get quality Android products, some of which will be better quality than an iPhone, but that's beside the point of this article.
Seriously, I recently bought a new Huawei U8300 for $29, no contract. Not as a phone (though it works fine), but as a dirt-cheap, networked GPS & IP camera that'll run any Android app - for $29. How awesome is that?
This is the advantage of real diversity (that you want to block) - there is something for everyone. Thank Christ Google saved us from Jobsian monoculture.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
... Mac's hardware is under Draconian control and can't fail because there is no room for innovation. Unlike PCs, which have more modern hardware, gets hardware upgrades sooner, and offers the user options, not McDonalds menu choices.
So go back to Blackberry, iPhone which are McDonalds phones of single-digit model options, whereas you can get dozens of models of Smartphones that run Android.
The bleeding edge still has performance and apps that runs circles around the decrepit Blackberry. And don't even mention Siri -- an admittedly great software "killer app" designed to keep renewed interest in the aging iPhone hardware.
People who buy Android phones live more daring and reckless lives? This sounds like a silly survey.
I had the same thought, and went squirrling through the WDS site. looky what I found,
not relevant to the query, but impressive as all hell
http://www.wds.co/wds_device_shipments.pdf
It could be that the hardware isn't worse for androids, its that it is more difficult to replace or file a claim with Apple then it is with android phones.
I had a blackberry for several years and have had an android phone for 2 and have never had any problem.
I do on the other hand know several people who have had several iphones die and were un-replaceable because of whatever excuse Apple could come up with.
That and people are far more likely to "upgrade" their iphones the moment a new version comes out instead of using their existing phone until it stops functioning.
TruePunk | Games
Cheaply made and badly engineered hardware has high failure rate and low durability.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
People need to keep in mind, this study asks the carriers or "WDS.co" company about the repair rate. When an iPhone has an issue, people don't go to the carrier to address the problem, they go to Apple. So, by definition, the data is skewed in Apple's favor because the study doesn't bother to ask about Apple's support rate at the Genius Bar! (If they would even disclose this, which they likely won't.) Therefore, it's no surprise they didn't see as many Apple-related calls... it would be like asking Apple how many Android phone calls they got... it's a dumb question.
I think the 'real' issue here is that 'some' carriers have decided to provide what they considered a bottom-end option for potential Android customers -- and, reading between the lines, they're going to suffer disproportionately for it.
By analogy, I remember when one of the major companies making bicycles decided to get into the exercise treadmill business in the '90s. They, too, decided to develop a feature-rich, but very cost-limited design (one of the interesting parts of which was making a recognizably well-designed PWM motor controller out of the sort of electronic components, and with the sort of build 'quality', you'd see in those old transistor radios!). The chief cause of their subsequent disaster was that they decided that offering a 7-year guarantee would be a desirable competitive advantage.
Well, the treadmills began to fail just as you'd think they might -- little vacuum motors burning up and taking "power" transistors (snarky sarcasm here) with them; bearings and shafts in rollers going bad; frames racking, and so forth. Their problem was that each warranty complaint required either a service call or an outright machine replacement (with the recovered machine then requiring someone to perform shop repairs on it). To make a long story short, the warranty costs ate up all the (relatively meager of course at 'bottom end') profits on the treadmills... and then the profits from their 'Body by Jake' exercise equipment, and eventually the profits from the bicycle sales. They had to file for bankruptcy...
Now here, the point of the 'white boxes' is the same as the Gillette model; you intend to make your profits on the contract and associated services/product. But if the phone goes down (especially if it proves tedious or impossible to recover content on it) those profit streams are interrupted. And I wonder just how many dead phones you have to replace, or take a bath on trying to 'fix' only to see the common-mode problems recur and recur, before the analysts start to grumble at quarterly time...
I concur that it is critical to recognize this isn't an "Android fails more often than iOS" kind of issue in this particular case. (I'd be interested in seeing data on whether Android OS has greater or less propensity to suffer autogenous failure than iOS does in real-world operation... but that isn't the focus of the present report, I think...)