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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.
Cheap stuff breaks, who knew?
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.
It couldn't be someone who has an axe to grind on Android phones, no?
The axe-grinding app is awesommer in iPhone than in android. Why, just last week for Halloween I needed to grind an axe to do some serial killing for more realistic blood spatters. The Android could not even get a two bars on the 3G network. Before it could even find and down load an app, iPhone had an axe grinding app going at full tilt. It was a close call, whether to use the iGrind to grind the axe or directly use iGrind itself on the victim. Anyway iGrind rules!
There is an app for it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Or more likely many of the Android phones are poorly made. ZTE, LG, and every other no name chinese flyby night has an android phone. No surprise they break a lot.
Add to that they are often free with contact and you get these poorly made phones ending up in the abusive little hands of children.
It couldn't be someone who has an axe to grind on Android phones, no?
Contrary to troll belief, that is an excellent question; TFA states that the study was done by "WDS" - however, it never specifies what "WDS" stands for.
A Google search yields no useful result.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You do know that LG is Korean, don't you?
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
LG isn't a "no name chinese flyby night" company, it's a major player in almost every electronics category and Samsung's primary competitor - not to mention it's Korean. I have used a few different Android phones made from LG and my primary handset is an LG Revolution. They made good hardware. Also name me a single phone - or piece of electronics for that matter - that isn't manufactured by some Chinese company most people haven't heard of, including the iPhone. Oh you can't? Shut the fuck up.
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.
Google makes the operating system shithead, not the hardware.
You want to talk shit about the hardware used in android devices then talks shit about the manufacturers since they would be the ones to blame.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
There's a physical wall between batteries and the other parts. Just admit it, Google starts something but they never finish or polish it. This is why Android is failing too.
Why would you expect a software maker to be responsible for hardware faults? If your PC's power supply bursts into flames, would you blame Microsoft for not finishing or polishing your PC?
Calling cheap, low-end phones "cheap low-end phones" doesn't mean that every other product made by the company is a cheap piece of junk. It's too bad those washing machines are irrelevant to a discussion of the quality of "garbage low end phones."
Unless those washing machines run Android too? It must be a real bitch to fit them in your pocket though... people said the iPad was too big!
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.
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.
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"?