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 study projects that the failure rate for the iPhone after two years will be between 9.2 and 11.3 percent, compared to actual two-year failure rates of 14.3 percent for BlackBerries and 21.0 percent for Treos.
Surprisingly, battery problems is less of an issue for the iPhone than for the other two brands. Less than 0.5 percent of iPhone malfunctions are due to the battery dying, compared to about one percent for the BlackBerry and iPhone. The iPhone also has fewer call quality problems than the other two. The biggest problem for all three phones are malfunctions involving the touch screen or keyboard. For the iPhone in particular, this is an area that needs work. According to the study, “one third of all reported iPhone problems were screen-related.” Many of these were dead spots in the older 2G phones, but the 3G phones have their own screen issues.
The most likely cause of an iPhone’s demise, however, is an accident. A full 12 percent of iPhone failures are because the owner dropped it, spilled coffee on it, or otherwise stopped treating it like the delicate computer that it is. That compares to a 9 percent failure rate due to accidents for all other phones, and is twice as high as the failure rate due to defects.
The study is embedded below:
Reliability Study: iPhone Vs. Blackberry Vs. Treo – Get more Information Technology
Ah Treo!!! I’m having bad flashbacks circa 2 years ago. iPhone, I love you.
whatever be it, RIM is still a larger share holder in the US (twice as Apple)…so I guess Apple has a long way to go for the Business users.
http://www.livbit.com
Ya my treo always locked up and always having to reset the thing. Thankgod for the iphone.
We are very excited about the long term prospects of the iPhone and we believe it will make a staple in the business market space…we are banking on it! Our business is a web 2.0 small business application for the iPhone.
http://www.proposalware.com
The Treo failure rate is a lot higher then that. I replaced my 700p like 8 times during a 1 year contract.
I have both and Iphone (original) and a Blackberry. The quality of the Iphone is superior to that of my Blackberry – even after 1 year of use and abuse the casing is still good and the screen is everlastingly beautiful.
Great Study.
The graph showing handset malfunction rates is silly. The Treo and Blackberry curves are clearly asymptotic, but they just did a linear regression on the iPhone curve, blowing it way out of whack. Thankfully, the paper authors realized this and also included a more sensible asymptotic regression on the data, but it wasn’t included in the blog post.
RTFA and so on. Is “Read the Fucking Paper” a thing?
Yes, both graphs were included in the study. Uploaded the wrong image. Switched it to the asymptotic one. Happy now?
Ya I don’t buy those numbers completely, it’s a bit too soon to tell. Even the first generation iPhone is still considered fairly new. I have both and they are both still kicking strong.
Doesn’t SquareTrade, generally, provide warranties for used equipment? I know I’m constantly getting offers from them for used equipment I’ve purchased on eBay.
So, doesn’t it stand to reason that Blackberries and Treos that SquareTrade warranties could be older devices than the iPhones (which has only been in existence for a year)?
I’d like to know the age of the devices that are having these hardware failures. Just saying that they fail a year after purchase isn’t good enough.
Never mind. It appears they used new devices for the stats of this study.
I’d be willing to bet that the majority of Blackberry’s problems deal with the trackball. Mine works fine but I know several people with malfunctioning trackballs.
I also think that the iphone’s app store, being regulated by Apple and AT&T, creates some checks and balances whereas a lot of BB and Treo software is created by developers with no sense of compatibility. A lot of 3rd party software for my Curve is buggy and there is little to no support involved for updates or fixes.
Well done Apple, but hey (desperate scream)…let me update ALL of my apps at once!
you can do it from iTunes ;)
“The iPhone also has fewer call quality problems than the other two”
LOL
No doubt! That absurd claim calls this whole thing into question!
The study is illogical.
I really enjoy my iPhone, yet Blackberrys and Treos have more moving parts than iPhones, therefore they will naturally fail more often with use.
Furthermore, I can attest first-hand that the iPhone 3G is inferior in reception to the Bold in side-by-side testing in NYC and Ohio. :)
Seriosuly now… that means that Windows Mobile phones are 10 times as reliable as Blackberries. I have had WM phones for years and had no problems with reliability, only with the fact that you have to reboot them once a week or so. But iPhones – fail all the time.
WoW! Aren’t you a lucky one… only reboot your WinMobile device once a week! All three of my WinMobiles I had before my iPhone I had to reboot at least once a day. If I was in a dead zone too long, I’d usually need to reboot it again, or it would silently reject all calls and notifications until I did. The customer support people said rebooting it “using the pen, in the tiny hole to hard reboot it.. was standard procedure, and should be done about once a day”.
Add in the need for a tiny pen that was hard to use and easily lost, a bulky design, and eventual battery problems making me replace them more than once a year, not to mention randomly locking up my windows OS when synced (all the mobiles, and all updates), and you have the makings of the most hated devices I ever owned.
Oh, and call quality? I couldn’t use any of the Winmobiles in my own house. My iphone even works in my basement office. And, yes.. I have had to reboot it.. I think twice. In a year.
I’m a Blackberry Pearl owner – and when I first bought my Pearl, it crashed on me once a day or so, so I called up my phone company and they said they were happy to replace it for me. The replacement was great and now it’s worked for about a whole year always on without a full system crash even once (I admit sometimes app crash, but the phone itself still responds so I am able to get out of the dead app).
However, whenever I play with my friends’ iPhones, they all seem pretty unstable – a game crashes resulting in the whole phone needing to be restarted, and it keeps crashing as I play it – maybe a few times an hour – my friend just tells me “yeah sometimes that happens just reboot it”.
Now I’m not about to base any judgement on just my own personal experience, but I do want to question whether just warranty figures themselves are good enough a metric for measuring “reliabililty”? Maybe iPhone users just live with less “reliability” because of the obvious desirability of the iPhone; whereas Blackberry users who are mainly business users like me get theirs replaced at the first sign of any instability?
Absolutely agree with you Tim. It would be really interesting to look at the consumer demographics of the iPhone. While for Blackberry, i can perhaps assume, that most users will be heavy business users and hence there will be more chances of the phone crapping out. If we just pick such hardcore business users for the iPhone and then compare with Blackberry, the results will make more sense to me.
Otherwise, this is just skewed data and not important to me.
This is a bit silly as it ignores the Achilles heel of the iPhone – you can’t drop it. A BB is designed to slip out of your pocket and fall dozens of time and won’t crack. The iPhone — one slip and it can and likely will crack on you. The component may nominally have higher quality, but the Blackberry is better designed overall to deal with corporate and real world abuse.
Jason – check out the last section in the report, on Accidental Damage. We report that iPhone Accidental Damage rates are about 1/3 higher than other phones.
Cheers.
Dropped my iPhone on the ground last weekend at a restaurant and it completely destroyed the screen. Even worse, just before I went out, I took the protective case off of it so it would fit in my jogging armband. So infuriating, but definitely my fault. The next time I decide to purchase a smart phone I am definitely going to factor “ease of being destroyed” into my decision, haha.
I’m a little surprised that TechCrunch would republish such a poorly done study. The study was with phones from Oct. 2006- Oct. 2008. That means there was 9 months of data that didn’t include the iPhone at all. They also say that this is only problems reported directly to SquareTrade. If you’re an Apple person are you going to go back to an Apple Store or SquareTrade within the first year of use? Also, they didn’t take into account what carrier the phone was on which can have a significant affect on the number of problems that you have with a phone. Show me a real study and then I’ll consider it.
why would you be surprised? Techcrunch is a joke and Michael just types whatever the highest bidder tells him too. Your first mistake is assuming that this is a legit news place. Techcrunch is the equal to US Weekly and People Mag.
I and several of my colleagues have had Blackberries with the scrollwheel ( not trackball) for years and never had one problem. Although this is anecdotal – this is confirmed by our customers (reflecting about 50,000 devices) that they have had very rare problems bar some infant mortality. A device that lived 7 days usually doesnt have problems for years.
The new trackball devices are flimsy – in addressing the consumer market RIM has compromised on ruggedness.
This is BULLSHIT
I love my curve & my new bold. Keep killing it Blackberry
I cannot get over mac boys (including those in the blogosphere) circle jerking each other while paying Apple a ridiculous amount of money for products with a small (although well designed) feature set.
Also the new iPhone hasn’t even been around for a year, this study is retarded.
my G3 vibrate/ringer button got broken, I went to the apple store and they gave me a new set. Apple service is the best.
SquareTrade is not used over AppleCare.
correlation does not equal causation
This study does not compare the quality of phones. SquareTrade is a backup insurer, and never hears about problems corrected by the first “insurer”, namely the company that makes the product. The iPhone may or may not have greater problems than other phones, but SquareTrade will not hear about them so long as Apple keeps offering what people say is excellent customer service.
Ditto that. What SquareTrade is effectively saying is that the iPhone has WORSE problems than BB; that is, whatever problems Apple can/does solve, PLUS those problems that Apple does not solve and which SquareTrade has to deal with.
I am not sure that SquareTrade is the definitive source of information for phone reliability… I think a carrier would have a much larger sample size of customers….
Considering how many well-publicized problems were reported with iPhones (and continue to be) since it was introduced, the results of this study seem somewhat suspect.
Wow, surprising…but I’ll beleive it.
Like others have said, my Blackberry is solid!
And I hear just about every day in my Twitter stream about iPhone owners headed to the geek bar or whatever its called due to an iPhone fail.
Well, I hate my Nokia E61 but in terms of build stability it is amazing; I must have dropped it at least 15 times over the past 2 years and there hasn’t been any damage except small dents in the case (which made out of a magnesium alloy). Screen is almost virgin after 2 years but the OS is as crappy as ever.
There’s nothing about the reliability of blackberry’s battery vs iphones? Blackberry is superior.. at least in the battery section.
i definitely agree with this one
I’ve had the BB 8800 for 14 months now. I’m on my 4th one. The data port receptical was the first thing to go, it has this little mount in it that is paper thin and broke. The verizon store guy says he sees it all the time. The other three times it broke was because keys stopped working on the keyboard or the roll ball stopped working.
Luckily I bought insurance
So waiting for my 2 year contract to be up with Verizon…then I’m going to the iphone which has a REAL BROWSER (BB Browser blows chunks) and 3rd party apps.
OH one other thing. So many of my friends have left Verizon to be iphone users that my Verizon out-of-network text and calling has steadily gone up…making my phone bill more expensive for staying with Verizon. I never saw that coming (should have) and I’ll need to look at whether ATT has free in-network calling/text in like 8 months.
Oh well, at least the phone network is reliable…many of my iphone friends can’t seem to stay on a call.
BULLSH*T reporting
5.6% failure for iPhone means 94.4% reliable
11.2% failure for Blackberry means 88.8% reliable
therefore “iPhone is 6% more reliable than Blackberry”…but that’s not as grabby of a headline is it now?
RETARDED “survey” (more like Apple-sponsored propaganda).
How many BB models and how many BB devices are in the wild? More models, more units in use, more hours in operation (older products) = more reported problems.
2 questions deserve an answer here:
1. The “study” claims that 15,000 phones warrantied by Square Trade were included in coming up with the results. However, no where does it indicate (and should have been very easy to include) how many of these 15,000 were attributed to each of the three phones. It makes a huge difference in the results if the samples aren’t equal per phone.
2. This report by Square Trade explicitly states: “A full 12 percent of iPhone failures are because the owner dropped it, spilled coffee on it, or otherwise stopped treating it like the delicate computer that it is.” At the same time, the Square Trade website on both the home page and their iPhone page claims the following: “80% of iPhone failures come from drops, spills and other accidents. SquareTrade offers the ONLY iPhone protection that covers accidents from handling.”
So which is it 12% or 80%? It appears that this “report” has a purpose. That purpose is to make the top-selling iPhone appear more reliable against the competition. At the same time Square Trade’s website uses an 80% “scare percentage” to sell more warranties on the phone least likely to need it. That’s what this report is all about. Selling their product…warranties. And if the iPhone really is that much better than the competition (probably is), they stand to gain more by selling warranties that are never used. That’s the nature of selling insurance. However, making inaccurate claims to sell the product is not part of selling insurance…that’s what is called a scam.
The study sounds preposterous to me.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
damn! Treo sucks!
Your article is completely misleading, how about deleting it or changing the title to “Blackberry users 2x more likely to claim backup warranties than iPhone users”.
The data is only for people who reported malfunctions to Squaretrade. The true data on failure rates depends on a range of other factors, like how many people used Applecare, or whether iPhone users are less likely to use Squaretrade than Bberry users.
Ask Apple and Bberry for the stats if you really want to write an article about this.
Well for Business Blackberry users, its time to think about iPhones.
I have iPhone for more than a year now and here is my experience:
-hardward looks very solid
-OS does not crash at all, but sometimes have delays (up to 30 seconds)
-Built-in apps are very solid – never crash
-aluminum back – scratches easily if devide is not in a case
-screen – broke from a very small fall. however, the device works perfectly with the broken screen.
In total, iPhone is very good and solid. I don’t have enough experienece with BB.
my comments at http://www.commentino.com/orim
Yeah Whatever. The iphone may be reliable but is a scratch magnet from the moment that you take it out of the plastic. You don’t see blackberry owners buying specialized cases for their devices so they don’t look like hell in 2 months.
The Iphone is also not a real business device. Its designed as a personal phone. The iphone’s don’t see the rigors of corporate fleet abuse that blackberrys do. The Iphone is a great toy but is far from a real corporate communication device.
ok. I concur with all of the other people deriding the study.
One more thing: so there are 15,000 phones total. As for the iPhone it’s just one device. What about for the Treo and BB? There are a multitude of models, etc. If we all had the same generation phones, and the same expectations ,maybe it’ll be a bit more revealing.
Having provided service for both Treo’s and BBerrys, I can attest that the BBerry’s are far more reliable. We had trouble calls with Treo’s all the time. Constant software issues, lost stylis, battery issues… Furthermore, we had to load 2 pieces of software (Intellisync and Credent) to make the Treo compatable with our systems whereas the BBerry requires a BES server. MUCH easier managing users contacts, etc, using the BES. Furthermore, I have used the Verizon BBerry for 1 year and have dropped it a few times with no issues other than cosmetic scratches on case. Sure the browser locks up 1-2 times per month (downloading script) and you have to pull battery out/back in to cure so we tell our business users to do just that. Trackball is a minor issue but a quick blast from air-can seems to do the trick. I have seen 1 issue with keyboard keys “not working”, (user took device to beach perhaps?)had to send back for warranty replacement. With the way our salespeople use/abuse their BBerry’s I doubt an Iphone would last 1 month before warranty repair (personal opinion). Cheers, Bill
Hello,
instead of diving into the details discussed here (e.g. like Alan), I have some very basic doubt that this study is relevant at all (rather like john smith above).
It has to do with the “basic population” / universe underlying the data, more precisely: Are the usage patterns comparable _at all_? IMHO, iPhone is a very “lifestyle” market positioning and BB is a very extreme example of a “always-on-the-road professional power user” positioning. I do suspect (i.e. guess) the average BB being used something like three times as intensive as the average iPhone.
That is not even taking into account the market positioning of squareTrade’s services and factors like “did you ever see anyone carrying their BB in a soft protective sleeve?”.
Any data available on that?
Cheers, Nikolaus
just a tip for the authors of the graphs…you should keep the color/phone match the same across graphs and charts. It can be confusing to see iphone as green in some charts and blue in others…
I’d love to see the DOA and failure rates of the LG and HTC handsets, but I suspect nobody is willing to release them. ;)
This entire table is bogus. How can you compare replacements between the iPhone, Treo, and BlackBerry? The iPhone is one phone, whereas Treo and BlackBerry encompasses the company’s entire product line. Basically, the iPhone displays poor reliability! One iPhone model has a 5% malfunction rate, whereas the BlackBerry product line (consisting of over 15 models) has a 12% malfunction rate. For an entire product line to be that reliable is quite impressive, I must say. Brutal that comments like this are made without realising the basis behind information.
I don’t really think that this study can be relied upon. Our office manager is extremely proactive with our blackberries because they’re work devices. If there’s an issue, no matter how small, she will contact our carrier and arrange to have the device replaced.
In many of the cases, I’ve seen, I would probably have “put up and shut up” if it had been a personal device.
Unless I’m very much mistaken, there isn’t a huge amount of corporate use of iPhones yet. This in itself is a good reason why you would expect their rate of return to be significantly lower.