Android Phones More Prone To Hardware Problems

adeelarshad82 writes "A nearly year-long study conducted by WDS on 600,000 support calls has found that Android phones are more susceptible to hardware faults than other types of devices. '14 percent of all technical support calls for Android devices could be traced to a hardware fault, versus 3.7 percent for RIM BlackBerry, 8 percent for iPhones and 9 percent for Windows Phone 7 devices.' WDS attributed the gap in hardware faults to the disparity in OEMs that manufacture Android devices."

Of course - its by design!

[GooberToo]

Android runs on the full gambit of available phone devices. That means on the low end, crappy hardware is there by design. Crappy hardware, by design, driven by cost considerations, are going to have less reliable hardware and less QA.

Basically the story says, "Shit happens. Sometimes free market economics create products which are far from ideal." Is anyone really surprised. Next story. I mean, that's really all that needs to be said. Duh.

Commodity phones

[vawwyakr]

Android is used on the cheapest smart phones so they use the cheapest parts....to you know...make them cheap.

The other way to read this...

[tdyer]

Is that 96.4% of all rim support calls are for the terrible software.

Garbage headline

[cabraverde]

WDS did not disclose how many support calls in general technicians fielded for each platform

So without saying that android phones are more or less reliable in general, what they are really saying is:

Android phones less prone to software problems.

In other news

[Chrisq]

14 percent of all technical support calls for Android devices could be traced to a hardware fault, versus 3.7 percent for RIM BlackBerry, 8 percent for iPhones and 9 percent for Windows Phone 7 devices.'

In other news: '86% of all technical support calls for Android devices could be traced to a software issue, versus 96.3 percent for RIM BlackBerry, 92 percent for iPhones and 91 percent for Windows Phone 7 devices.'

Shows how bad Android is doesn't it....

Misleading

[jonescb]

Keep in mind that this is 14% of _support calls_. Using the same logic as the summary, you could say that Android phones have fewer software issues than other phones because only 86% of calls are related to software. That is assuming there isn't a third option in support calls.

The article even states this, they don't have shipment numbers for devices so they don't have data for the phones that don't require support. Their sample is only phones that people are having problems with in the first place.

Did someone fail statistics?

[andymadigan]

TFA deson't make any sense. The ratio of technical support that ends up being hardware tells us nothing about the hardware fault rate. It could simply be that people are less likely to have other problems with the phone, or that the users are more technical on average and more likely to be able to solve a non-hardware problem on their own.

For instance, let's say:

Device A: 2 million sold, 1 million support calls, 100K hardware calls

Device B: 4 million sold, 1 million support calls, 150K hardware calls

Device A: "10%"
Device B: "15%"

But really, the failure rate for A would be 5% whereas the rate for B would be 3.75%.

In short, the article's author is an idiot.

Trolled again!

[MogNuts]

Hey Slashdotters, looks like we've been trolled again! After that story that just was released about Android having supposedly crappier apps a couple days ago. This is just garbage. And for the past few months, I can't seem to mod these stories down.

I think the Apple schills/PR machine is turning on their control of the tech media even more (releasing thinly veiled "news stories"), because they can't realize they can win on features/openness/technical merit. I mean geez, they knock android, but don't even mention that the iPhone 4 can't even make *simple calls* properly* (read: antennagate)?

I think my days of "Chips and Dip" are over. I'm thinking it's time to retire the old UID.