iPhone proves more reliable than BlackBerry

 

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Posted on 27 Nov 2008 at 09:19

iPhones are half as likely as rival smartphones to malfunction within the first year of ownership, according to a US provider of extended warranties.

SquareTrade reports that a study of 15,000 iPhones, BlackBerrys and Palm Treos showed that problems occurred with just 5.6% of the Apple devices, as opposed to 11.9% for BlackBerrys and 16.2% for Treos.

“One year in, the data suggests that Apple’s first foray into the cell phone handset market has not been plagued by hardware problems, as some early reports suggested,” the report says. “Aside from exhibiting a relatively high rate of touch screen failures, iPhones have not had significantly high malfunction rates in any of the areas we identified.”

The biggest problem area for iPhone owners is the touchscreen, the company said. One third of all reported iPhone problems were screen-related, but in many cases the failure was not down to Apple, but a result of accidental damage.

SquareTrade notes that 80% of the problems with the iPhone are down to the user and caused either by spilling liquid on the device or dropping it.

“An iPhone user is more than twice as likely to experience an iPhone failure due to accidental damage than through a handset malfunction,” the report says. “An astounding 12% of iPhone owners have reported a failure due to accidental damage at the one 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 two years.”

Incidentally, liquid damage is not covered by the Apple warranty. Like the new MacBooks, the iPhone and most recent iPod models have a Liquid Submersion Indicator that records if liquid has entered the device.

RIM and Palm declined to comment. Apple pointed to a recent report that ranked Apple highest for customer satisfaction among smartphone users.

Author: Simon Aughton