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iOS Devices Failed More Often Than Android Units During Q3, Says Report (phonearena.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the you-get-what-you-pay-for dept.

A report from Blannco Technology Group has revealed that iOS devices failed more often than Android devices in the third quarter. Specifically, 62% of Apple iPhone and Apple iPad units suffered failures, compared to the 47% failure rate tallied by Android devices. Phone Arena reports: Apps crashed on 65% of iOS powered devices compared to just 25% of Android models. The breakdown for the iOS devices shows the Apple iPhone 6 with a leading 13% failure rate, followed by the Apple iPhone 6s (9%), Apple iPhone 5s (9%) and the Apple iPad Air 2 (2%). In the report, some of the blame for the high iOS failure rate is placed on the iOS 10 update. Among Android devices, the LeEco Le 2 had a 13% failure rate to lead the way. Two Xiaomi devices were next, both with a 9% rate. Those models were the Redmi 3S and the Redmi Note 3. Rounding out the top five are the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (5%) and the Lenovo Vibe K5 Note (4%). Android flavored models faced problems with the battery (seen on 7% of devices) and issues with the screen (6%). Samsung branded phones and tablets had the most Android failures among manufacturers at 11%. That was followed by the 4% registered by Xiaomi built products. Crashed apps by far was the leading problem for iOS users in North America during the quarter. Worldwide, the rising temperature of an iDevice was the biggest issue. Android users in North America had to deal with crashed apps (21%) more than other problems. Worldwide, those using an Android phone or tablet were most likely to face an issue with the USB port. Last quarter, iOS devices had a 58% failure rate, which marked the first time that Apple's devices had a lower performance rate compared to Android.

21 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Dumb Story by rsmith-mac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Given that we spent the majority of the previous version of this story bitching about how the math is rubbish and that the story is clickbait, why the hell would you bring it back?

    Nothing's changed. The math is still rubbish, and trying to claim that 62% of iOS devices failed is dumb enough that it makes one's head want to implode. Please go look up the definition of insanity and then go sit in a corner and think about how many man hours of time across the globe has just been wasted by posting this dumb story on Slashdot.

    1. Re:Dumb Story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      bias just a little? you can always spot the religious maniacs.

      How ironic that you want to bring up religion when the only bias the parent has is one towards facts instead of "statistics" mired in bullshit.

      And while it would appear that the "failure" rate on iOS is high, Android suffers from considerably different issues. I'll take a crashing legitimate app over perfectly functioning malware any day.

    2. Re:Dumb Story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's stupid wording to refer to app crashes as "failures", and it's pretty dumb to compare app crashes with battery and screen problems (by which I assume they're talking about hardware failures); pokemon go crashing is a pretty minor inconvenience, compared to a dead battery or screen. It's a shame, because there's probably actually some interesting stats in there somewhere, but it's difficult to get at them past the bullshit.

    3. Re:Dumb Story by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

      Also funny that the report before that (which had much better results for iOS devices than for any Android phone) didn't get any mention on Slashdot. Of course the math was already rubbish in that one - but that wasn't the reason why there wasn't a story, now was it? http://bgr.com/2016/05/11/android-vs-iphone-stability-study-q1-2016/

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  2. Apple should not be worried by ctrl-alt-canc · · Score: 2, Funny

    Samsung Galaxy 7 line of products will soon rebalance the percentage.

    1. Re: Apple should not be worried by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not that many failed.. Samsung recalled them early enough. Whereas with Apple devices, they simply pretended issues like antenna gate never existed

    2. Re: Apple should not be worried by Freischutz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not that many failed.. Samsung recalled them early enough. Whereas with Apple devices, they simply pretended issues like antenna gate never existed

      They had to, your phone blowing up is a bit more hazardous to your health and less suited to being ignored than 'antenna-gate'. Samsung seemed to be perfectly happy to ignore less explosive FUBARs surrounding their products such as complaints from their customers when they orphaned the early Galaxy Tab line. Samsung is not exactly the angel of innocence when it comes to stiffing their customers over the flawed products they sold them.

    3. Re:Apple should not be worried by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 2

      Samsung Galaxy 7 line of products will soon rebalance the percentage.

      Depends on how you look at it. Something like... 20 of them failed, right? And millions were sold. That makes a really, really low failure rate.

      And this is how statistics are twisted.

      --
      "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
    4. Re:Apple should not be worried by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but I'm sure that Samsung may have looked at the problem and decided that scrapping untold amounts of R&D and product design and manufacturing may have been worth it because they knew what the actual problem was, and what the real failure rate would be in time.

      Do you think they would just shitcan their flagship product and have nothing to sell in that space for months if it wasn't an actual problem?

      20 were confirmed to fail within weeks of launch. What would the numbers be at 6 months? A year? I'm guessing an engineer somewhere did the math and saw it as being a significant percentage; then that percentage was combined with the PR DISASTER that would have been having thousands of occurrences with collateral damage - burns inflicted on people, structure fires, plane cabins filled with lithium fire smoke, etc.

      Samsung is the only entity that knows how bad it could have gotten, and they are just as profit motivated as anyone else - they didn't recall and EOL because "it was the happy nice thing to do" - they did it because it was the "save the company from multi-billion-dollar lawsuits that we would lose and wholesale product bans thing to do."

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      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    5. Re:Apple should not be worried by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

      Samsung Galaxy 7 line of products will soon rebalance the percentage.

      Depends on how you look at it. Something like... 20 of them failed, right? And millions were sold. That makes a really, really low failure rate. And this is how statistics are twisted.

      20 failed? That must be the number for those "we found the problem, this phone will not explode , we promise" version of the Note 7.

      Heck, even Samsung claimed 35 confirmed cases when they started the exchange program to that version. And that's how statistics are twisted

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  3. Also, no solar-powered iOS devices by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Failure of an app is not a failure of the device, or of the operating system.

    1. Re:Also, no solar-powered iOS devices by jeremyp · · Score: 2

      Rubbish. Except in low level embedded applications, all computer programs use existing libraries in the OS.

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
  4. Pokemon Go? by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apparently, the reliability of mobile phones is now measured by how often Pokemon Go Android crashes vs Pokemon Go iOS.

    Braindead.

    1. Re:Pokemon Go? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 2

      Apparently, the reliability of mobile phones is now measured by how often Pokemon Go Android crashes vs Pokemon Go iOS.

      Braindead.

      Gotta crash them all... Seriously, this study has a number of flaws that make it useless; from calling any app crash a failure, to merely running slowly, to presenting the data in a way that makes comparisons impossible. In addition, there is no mention of sample sizes. I'm surprised they didn't include a "the phone failed to turn on after we left it running for a couple f days..." as a failure to get 100% failure rtes for all phones.

      --
      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  5. How by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    How would any company possibly know all that information? Apple would know the iOS data, and the Android app developers would know the Android data, but they sure aren't sharing it with "Blannco Technology Group". These "research firms" need to go out and get a real job.

  6. Trash article by Coditor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Samsung Note 7's occasionally exploding is a failure. An app crashing is generally the fault of the developer; even crashes derived from the OS is a software failure not a device failure since software can be updated. In general on both platforms 1 in 50 users each day experience a crash (2%). If you stupidly add up how many people have an app crash any time an entire year compared to the total number of devices and print that "statistic" you wind up with this article.

  7. How many of them caught fire? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Were any models banned from aircraft?

  8. Suspicious by bakoolguy2 · · Score: 2

    The rate of failure of the iOS devices seems to follow the rate of ownership. I wonder if they even bothered to normalize the data? In other words, if among Apple devices, most people own and use the iPhone 6, that will of course it will have the most instances of failure. To get meaningful data, you'd have to adjust for that.

    1. Re:Suspicious by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2

      Make no mistake - there is absolutely no "meaningful data" presented in this piece of trash article. Anyone that equates an app crash with total hardware failure is selling a story.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  9. BeauHD, please don't use slashdot as your blog by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OP is absolutely correct. I was reading the summary and thinking "WTF?" The math is absolute rubbish. BeauHD, if that isn't obvious to you, you need to stop personally selecting stories with stats in them to post on the front page of slashdot.

    The whole point of having reader submissions which are first vetted by other readers, and the cream of the crop elevated by editors to the front page, is to filter out crap articles like this one. It keeps the signal to noise ratio up. You (and the other "editors" doing the same) are short-circuiting that process by posting stories you find interesting straight to the front page. Please stop.

  10. Re:You can thank Swift for that decline... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm just glad that this "study" treats a crash of a YouBook app as a "failure" the same as if the phone explodes and embeds shards of glass in your eyes.

    Seems like a pretty fucking stupid way to cook the numbers to tell a narrative you're trying to sell. And Slashdot Media is buying, apparently.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.