

Android hardware fails more than iPhone, BlackBerry - gadgetsrule
http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/03/android-hardware-fails-more-than-iphone-blackberry-repairs-cost-carriers-2-billion/

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ConstantineXVI
It's meaningless to say "Android" hardware fails more often v. Apple iPhones
and RIM Blackberrys; such a statement is like saying sedans fail more often v.
BMW M3s and Toyota RAV4s. Apple and RIM are single companies, Android phones
are produced by dozens. "LG hardware [or even "LG Android phones"] fails more
often than iPhone, Blackberry", for instance, would be a far more useful
study.

~~~
danssig
That's a cop-out. I bet you're totally OK with people saying "Android is
destroying iPhone in the marketplace!". You can't have it both ways.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Android is an OS. It competes with iOS.

The LG Revolution is a phone. It competes with the iPhone.

Android is a fine OS. The LG Revolution is crap. In terms of hardware failure,
the manufacturer means more than the software.

~~~
ugh
What you say is true.

I’m just not sure why that makes the comparison bad?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
It's not a meaningful scientific basis for such a comparison. Choice of OS
isn't a major factor in hardware quality. Nokia proves this; the N8 (Symbian),
N9 (MeeGo), and Lumia 800 (WinPhone) are all of fairly similar quality (quite
high, I might say); yet each runs a totally different operating system.
Likewise, you can have two Android phones from different manufacturers (or
even the same, in some cases) that are at very different extremes of hardware
quality. A study such as [1] is far more meaningful, it's comparing
manufacturer to manufacturer (the people responsible for putting the phones
together) instead of OS to OS (as one phone could theoretically be sold with a
different OS with no change in quality).

[1] [http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/cell-phone-comparison-
study...](http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/cell-phone-comparison-study-nov-10)

~~~
ugh
I still don’t see why this is not a valid comparison. Sure, hardware is
independent from software (more or less) but that doesn’t mean you can’t
meaningfully compare the two.

~~~
roflharrison
It does mean you can't meaningfully compare the two.

Are you saying that if people started installing Android onto iPhones (if it
were possible) all of a sudden the hardware failure rates for iPhones would
sky rocket?

~~~
ugh
Of course not! Why would you think that?

All this says is that devices running Android fail on average more often than
iPhones – for whatever reason (regression to the mean, one designer and
manufacturer vs many, lower priced devices, and so on). That’s a perfectly
valid comparison.

~~~
roflharrison
The comparison is invalid because iPhone/Blackberry devices are premium high
cost devices with high quality control. A direct comparison will only work
against other premium high cost devices with high quality control.

By comparing every Android phone on the market (from cheap to premium) to only
premium devices you are always going to get a skewed result.

~~~
ugh
I don’t understand. Why does that make the comparison invalid? That makes no
sense at all.

You are naming one factor that might explain the difference – but that is
exactly the point of such comparisons! To figure out what the difference is!

------
mithaler
I'd like to see this broken down by manufacturer and model. Without that, all
this tells us is "some Android phones are cheaply made", which is to be
expected for an OS designed to be cheap and easy to put on hardware.

~~~
danssig
As I told the other poster; If you start doing this with Android "sales" as
well then all will be good. At the moment when people talk about how is
"winning" it's always the whole of Android vs. iPhone. Given that I think this
report is perfectly acceptable.

~~~
erd
Whether or not Android is "winning" has nothing to do with hardware
reliability, which is the subject of this article. I'd personally like to see
the reliability numbers broken out by OEM.

~~~
jlcx
Right. This article isn't about who's "winning"; it's just a reminder that the
benefit of hardware choice means that information is needed to make a good
choice. Longer-term reliability information is more difficult to obtain than
basic specifications, but it's still important.

------
danssig
The Android fanboy behavior in this thread is absolutely appalling. People
point out the logical inconsistency in wanting to lump Android together when
it's a positive and split out when it's a negative and the result is mass
downvotes? Disgusting. I'm at -5 on some of my posts. I wouldn't get that for
calling someone a fucking asshole.

Some of you need to go reread pg's essay on ID.

~~~
mithaler
You seem to be trying to make some kind of wider point about "Android
fanboys", and in so doing you're accusing people of making statements about
Android sales that they haven't made, and are irrelevant to the OP.

In reality, all I pointed out was that a report about hardware failure should
come with statistics broken down by hardware manufacturer. The other "Android
fanboys" that you're similarly decrying said the same. Your point would be
valid if we were also saying, at the same time, that good and crappy Android
phones put together beat Apple. Which we aren't. This isn't about Android
"winning" or "losing"; it's about failing hardware, which is highly relevant
for anyone selecting a phone, regardless of whatever ideological position one
might take WRT smartphone software.

~~~
danssig
>The other "Android fanboys" that you're similarly decrying said the same.

No, the people I'm calling "Android fanboys" are the people who mass-downvoted
me for stating something they didn't want to hear. On reddit I would expect
this and go with it. It's appalling to see that kind of thing happening here.

~~~
mithaler
You didn't respond to my point, which is that you're derailing the comment
thread by accusing people of saying things they didn't say. That's a perfectly
legitimate reason to downvote a comment, and it has nothing to do with being
an "Android fanboy".

------
lotides
This thread is the perfect example of why I don't participate on HN as much as
I do other communities. HN has great articles but the FOSS extremists run the
comments.

1\. Repeated articles proclaim: Android overtakes the iPhone in sales. What
does this mean? It means that Apple is selling less of 1 phone model than
dozens of hardware manufacturers combined sell different phone models. So I
guess Android fans want Android to be thought of as "one platform", all
hardware vendors included.

2\. New article: Android hardware fails more than Apple iPhone (and
Blackberry, et. al.) but suddenly "YOU CAN'T DO THAT, YOU CAN'T COMPARE ALL
ANDROID PHONES WITH ONE PHONE."

So, which is it? I figured this out a long time ago. The answer is it's
whatever makes Android look better than iOS as a platform. The facts can
change daily, just as long as Android is the winner.

~~~
danssig
This is exactly right. Anything Google-related has a similar problem.
Android/Google is to HN as militant atheist is to reddit.

------
beej71
Assuming that some hardware is of lesser quality than other hardware, and
given the low cost (down to virtually free) of many Android devices, I'd
expect more failures per unit.

Of course, it's entirely possible that certain Android devices have lower
failure rates than their iPhone and BlackBerry peers. The study doesn't break
it down by device.

If you don't want to think about it, then just choose a BlackBerry, with its
6% rate.

------
ashishgandhi
Can we agree that when the customer goes out and buys an Android it's more
likely his phone will fail than say when he goes out and buys BB or iPhone.

~~~
bookwormAT
I think we can agree on that.

Of course, not many customers go out and search for "Android" phones. They buy
the Galaxy from Samsung, the Droid from Motorola, the EVO from HTC.

Most non-tech people I know either don't know what Android is, or they treat
it as a quality of a smartphone, such as "1GB RAM". If a smartphone says
Android in the description it usually means they can continue to use the apps
they used on their old device.

------
chugger
Android phone repair costs carriers billions: study 'At the moment, Android is
a bit of the Wild West,' says expert

Costly hardware failures are more common on Android devices than on Apple
iPhones and Research In Motion BlackBerry phones, which have strict control
over the components used in their devices

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45150844/ns/technology_and_scien...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45150844/ns/technology_and_science-
wireless/#.TrLHX_Qg8zU)

------
drivebyacct2
I was going to post this as a reply, but every thread here so far is talking
about this.

Saying that "Android is the larget smartphone platform" is not in
contradiction with the statement that it's unfair to treat all Android devices
equally. Nexus devices are superior to other devices in terms of consistency,
speed of updates and reliability. Sense and Blur laden devices are less likely
to be updated and are historically buggier.

It makes sense to lump Android together to talk about a _software platform_
because those are the statistics that matter to mobile developers. They want
to know where the users are. When it comes to phone, saying "Android phones
fail more often", is only one abstract level above saying "Smartphones fail
more often than dumb phones.".

While it's a true statement, it's not a complete statement. It seems to make
sense to distinguish between manufacturers of Android phones when making these
kinds of statements in my mind.

Note, I have no problem with this sort of an aggregate report. There just
seems to be a lot of "AHA" and "Gotcha", by talking about Android as a brand
and pointing out that Android is considered an "aggregate" for platform size
comparisons.

~~~
AlexandrB
> It makes sense to lump Android together to talk about a software platform
> because those are the statistics that matter to mobile developers. They want
> to know where the users are.

Not all Android phones are created equal - many have inferior hardware (which
developers have to account for separately) and others are only capable of
running ancient Android releases (which developers have to account for
separately). I'm not sure a developer who is looking at bulk data for the
Android platform is getting an accurate picture of the effort/payoff for
developing an Android app.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Right, which is why there is also data available for what devices are on what
versions and what percentages of users on what versions so that developers can
choose a minimum level to target. This problem isn't unique to Android either,
so I don't see how it changes what I siad.

~~~
AlexandrB
Yeah, but you're saying it makes sense for developers to consider Android to
be one software platform when looking at marked numbers. I'm pointing out that
this is just not true. It's much easier with iOS, for example, because unless
you're targeting very old hardware you can assume everyone is running iOS 4 or
5 (or soon will be), and the screen size is universally the same across
iPhones.

If you consider Android a single platform, then the Apple platform should be
iOS (including the iPad and iPod touch), but most comparisons of phone numbers
don't take these into account at all (for good reason IMHO).

