Android Phones More Prone To Hardware Problems 220
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! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course - its by design! (Score:5, Informative)
Android runs on the full gambit of available phone devices.
I hate to do this, but please, use the phrase correctly. The word in bold should be "gamut", [wikipedia.org] as in "the full gamut".
Examples [wordhippo.com]
(What is a partial gambit? [wikipedia.org] You offer your bishop but your opponent hasn't captured it yet?)
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Re:Of course - its by design! (Score:4, Interesting)
Some(by no means all, sadly) of the cheap dumbphones are both cheap and nigh-immortal, because nobody gives a damn what CPU they are using or how many UberMarks they get on some benchmarking suit that wouldn't fit in the onboard storage anyway. This means that, while they certainly don't use fancy parts, they are polished and solid designs.
The Android low end is extra unfortunate because it suffers from cheapskate-itis and much of the hardware gets churned and replaced by a different design all the time.
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The "full gambit"? I guess Android does require a sacrifice in order to gain an advantage.
-dZ.
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So you agree that Android's platform Marketshare is meaningless.
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Umm... why?
Umm... so, market share only counts when it's in Android's favor, got it.
FYI: iOS has outsold Android approximately 2:1. And it would seem that Android has a greater proportion of crappy hardware. Android saw declining market share last quarter.
Android doesn't have to "win" to be a good system. It's a *very* good nerd OS, and is also a nice alternative to iOS for consumers. Why are nerds so insecure about their computing choices (while simultaneously being so arrogant about them)? iOS is much better suited
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HTC - Makes Android and WinPhones on basically the same hardware ... I suspect that the failure rate is comparable
iPhone is one manufacturer - Apple - they do not differentiate between hardware and software errors
Blackberry - again one manufacturer who does not differentiate
Who exactly are they getting these figures?
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Not all hardware is used across all OSs. Many hardware packages are only available, for example, on Windows or Android, exclusively. Furthermore, look at some of the low end devices from Motorola. Some of them have been real stinkers. IIRC, HTC made a odd here and there too. And, there are lots of other players. In Asia, there are players you've likely never heard of. Quality is typically absolutely shitty and I wouldn't be surprised if those numbers were tossed in to dramatically bulk up shits rates for An
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HTC - Makes Android and WinPhones on basically the same hardware ... I suspect that the failure rate is comparable
iPhone is one manufacturer - Apple - they do not differentiate between hardware and software errors
Blackberry - again one manufacturer who does not differentiate
Who exactly are they getting these figures?
Yep, and those numbers are fine and dandy and all, but completely meaningless unless you're reporting on each manufacturer, not the OS that runs on them. It's like saying Milk is less healthy than Soda because more people out there are lactose intolerant.
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Just to be clear, because you tried to hide it in a lot of hand-waving:
Android phones are more prone to failure than other phones like iPhones and BlackBerries.
I especially like how you tried to make this out to be a good (or at least, deliberate) thing! And you blame this on the "free market". Yes, the exact same "free market" that brings you iPhones and BlackBerries, which fared better.
I mean, really! Apple and RIM are both free to make shitty hardware, but they choose not to. That's "by design" too, and
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Are you really that insecure about your "own" platform that you think anything that that is less than glowing praise is perceived as a paid-for trashing by shills working for "the man"? In this case, Apple (and again, on slashdot, nothing they ever do is plain and simple, it's all part of some grand illuminati-style plot to steal your freedoms and enslave the masses while simultaneously destroying open source).
The paranoid conspiracy stuff is just tiresome. It's quite obvious, and stated in the summary even
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Perhaps in this instance because who is WDF and of course how do you blame software for "keypad/button failures and microphone and battery issues". In this case "Windows Phone 7, meanwhile, will benefit". So in all, a silly little story based on a silly little study, all paid for by some silly little M$ marketing executive.
Commodity phones (Score:2, Insightful)
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What is going to be interesting to see is if the MS Windows Mobile phones continue to be more reliable than Android phones if and when the MS Windows phones begin to s
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An entirely substantiated conclusion from this data is that "Android phones vary pretty widely in quality and reliability, and there's no way of knowing whether a model is good or bad until after you've bought it." Corporate purchasers are not widely known for their risk-taking behaviors.
Why do you think Google has been slowly ratcheting up the controls and requirements for Android device makers? Because they realized that allowing a crapflood of cheap & shitty devices would tarnish the Android brand,
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...it's a shame that this information is not broken down in a more detailed fashion as to actually be useful to those of us that might buy a device.
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Just seems like they didn't even include Archos devices or the numbers would've turned out a lot worse.
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Well, if you can lump all the android devices together to claim dominance over iPhone marketshare, as is commonly done on here, that includes all the crappy Android handsets as well as the really good ones, then it seems fair to lump them all together when looking at bulk failure rate. You have to take the rough with the smooth.
How about we break down the handsets that are comparable to the iPhone and look at just their marketshare and just their failure rates? I suspect it would be broadly similar on hardw
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No, its not, it illustrates a point, and provides you information that you should be able to recognize.
Buyer beware when buying android based devices because some of them are most certainly in the race to those bottom of the barrel.
You're probably safer (probably) when buying a RIM, Apple or Win7Mo device as on average they seem to work better.
What you are seeing is Android becoming like the previous major phone OSes. Its like buying a phone with Symbian on it ... sure its got Symbian, but that doesn't mea
The other way to read this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's actually what I was thinking, too. Of course, I'm pretty much programmed to look at any presented statistics as cynically as possible.
"So what you're saying could be that Android phones have better software, requiring fewer support calls so that legitimate hardware problems make up a larger percentage?"
NB: Not an Android fanboy. Not even really an Android fan with all the scumware-friendliness and recent CM's submission to it re: private data spoofing.
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Garbage headline (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Mod up Parent! If that's not insightful, hell if I know what is!
Re:Garbage headline (Score:4, Funny)
Mod up Parent! If that's not insightful, hell if I know what is!
Not to disagree about GP post's insightfulness, but I am concerned about your difficulty in being able identifying insightful ideas without its aid. Let me toss a few out:
mod parent all the way up. (Score:2)
Garbage comment (Score:2)
Errrrnttt. Nice try. You are correct that the article is committing a statistical error, but so are you. Technical support calls range the gamut from questions, software problems, hardware problems, user errors, help on setup and installation, etc. And you can't lump all the nonhardware issues into "problems strictly with the software" per se because a question could be as simple as "how do I install this" but could be more intricate like asking value added questions about how to best set up wifi or wha
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If one platform gets 1000 calls, 100 of which are hardware, this article would say 10% hardware calls, another platform gets 10000 calls 200 of which are hardware and it would say 2% hardware calls.
while they are technically right, the later one would, assuming equal number of users, actually have worse hardware.
Now I'm not saying that any one platform is better or worse than the other, or even that their conclusion is wrong, only that the article lacks enough information to actually back up what they are c
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If by real message you mean, message spun like a politician was talking, than sure.
Nobody takes incomplete or factually incorrect data and spins it into a good thing like a politician, so therefore I must assume that you and the GP post are also politicians since there is no logical way you would have come to such a conclusion without making things up along the way.
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
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Could it mean there were more "real" problems with Android vs. more "I'm a dumbass and can't RTFM" problems with other platforms?
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I take it to mean that Android manufactures are more willing to replace a faulty phone than iPhone or rim. They are just better at convincing you that your phone is fine and working as expected, "just hold it different to get better reception"
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
the author explains his study a little bit [pcmag.com] in TFAcomments.
the focus of the study was something like "how many support calls will end in an (expansive) hardware replacement".
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Sheesh, I wouldn't put any Slashdot team in a spelling contest. Or are you suggesting that broken phones will be replaced by 12" pads?
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sure, you're right - and imo the article shouldn't be posted on /. (stuff that matters, my ass)
the thing on pcmag looks like a ripped-off press release - I never heard of WDS but I'm quite sure one can buy the complete study for whatever absurd piles of dollars. In a way this is nice metatrolling: the author auf the pcmag-piece *knows* that such an incomplete information base will lead to huge amounts of flaming - and he won, even slashdot is part of the crowd :)
stats need another dimension (Score:2)
Ok, look I'm an iphone user. Love it. Have the original and waiting to get the next one. But I'm not putting too much into this little survey.
I need to see the manufacturer listed here before I believe this is any more than propoganda. If it turns out that each manuf. has about the same average fault rate, then ok, there's a problem. But if it turns out that HTC comes out to 2% and Moto is at 25% then I'd say that it's not the OS, but the manuf. that's the problem.
And then going further, how does a man
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But if it turns out that HTC comes out to 2% and Moto is at 25% then I'd say that it's not the OS, but the manuf. that's the problem.
How could it be the OS? This is about hardware faults, and in fact has nothing to do with Android.
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It wouldn't be the OS causing hardware failures. The article is implying that in all cases android phones have more hardware failures. WE know they are not caused by the OS, but the unwashed masses don't.
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just more hardware failures per support call, no word on who has more support calls.
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How could it be the OS? This is about hardware faults, and in fact has nothing to do with Android.
Because a "hardware fault" might be caused by the drivers in the OS.
In other words, if one of the radios in the phone stops working, how can the tech know for sure if the hardware failed or the software is having problems talking to the hardware because the driver has a fault?
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All Android stories should be done by model since the compatibility matrix is so complex. The problem is, then Android is not "winning". Considering Android as a single thing is almost always absurd, this story is not really any more absurd then lumping all these same varied devices with 3 different versions of the OS into one pile and calling it Market share.
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I'm a rabid Apple fanboi and a temporary Android user - because I needed a cheap non-subsidised smartphone to buy me time between my 3GS dying and the 4s/5 coming out.
Now, if you want a *cheap* first hand smartphone, then it's a straight choice, Symbian or Android, and Android wins, I'm afraid. (I've owned and loved many symbian smartphones but not any that Nokia made!)
So, a quick trip to Argos and I have a ZTE Blade - the things are dirt cheap and effortless to root and install stock android on and the har
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I googled the problem and found it was a network issue that solved itself (in our eyes) the following morning.
Hardware? Software? Network?
Hmm... (Score:2)
For instance, are all the phones(regardless of OS and smart/dumb status) manufactured by a given OEM comparable in reliability? How about all phones by company that designed them? or Smart vs. dumb devices? Are 'flagship' devices more or less reliable than random carrier-branded contract fodder?
Unless android has some magical hardware-killing powers, it seems very unlikely that the OS itself has anything to do with it; b
Nearly year long ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Translation (Score:2)
"A nearly year-long study conducted by WDS on 600,000 support calls has found that some phones are more susceptible to hardware faults than other phones."
FTFY. If you take the flamebait out of it, that's all it's saying. Android phones are manufactured by a large number of manufacturers, and some of them are a bit cheap and nasty.
Did someone fail statistics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Then, too, there's the people who just walk into the store with the broken hardware because they know it is broken ("it doesn't turn on"), so that also would skew the results. But, the biggest skew of all is the fact that only support calls were part of the survey.
Having run a help desk, I can definitely say that the brighter people don't contact support until it is the last resort, while other people might call for every little thing that is different from their normal experience, except that they won't r
What is missing (Score:2)
And let us read down a little more before I comment...
SSDD (Score:2)
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Slashdot shits on everything. If it's not Apple's turn, as it usually is, it seems to be Android.
Android Phones Less Prone To Software Problems. (Score:2)
From TFA:
And there you have it. If the platforms had, say, the same amount of hardware trouble calls as non-Android platforms but a far lower number of software trouble calls y
Ruggedized phones ? (Score:2)
My Casio Commando is a ruggedized (water,shock,vibration,salt spray) resistant Android phone...
I wouldn't expect a hw fault with it. It's hw failure rate should be pretty low.......
Other companies also produce ruggedized android phones.
Did the other phones they discuss have ruggedized versions available?
-- Sam
Trolled again! (Score:2, Insightful)
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 m
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This story is bizarre and flawed. The app story was pretty good and highlights a real problem for Android...
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That's really scary. Holy moly.
Slanted (Score:3)
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Well, like I mentioned earlier (although the study is statistically flawed), Android users love to flaunt their dominant marketshare by lumping all Android handsets together to make the number large, so they can't really complain when that same set of phones is taken as the data set for "so what's the failure rate?".
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Why? When Android fans push their collective market share compared to Apple and RIM, they scoff when it is pointed out there is not one Android phone but a multitude. (As in: Each of those manufacturers compete with the others, a sale of an Xperia Play does not help Samsung one bit.) So if "Android" is supposed to be treated as one platform THEN, the Android fans should accept that Android is treated as one platform NOW.
I call bullshit (Score:2)
I have to call bullshit on this article. 14% of technical support calls were related to hardware faults, but it says nothing of the per capita rates of technical service calls. I find it far more likely that either a) android is far more easy to deal with issues yourself or b) used by a more technical user base. Either of these situations would result in less calls related to software issues, which would make the % of support calls that are hardware related go up significantly. Until they release inform
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I have to call bullshit on this article.
...and stop right there. There isn't enough information in that article to draw any conclusions.
My experience confirms it (Score:2, Interesting)
I love my Nexus One, but I have to say the statistics are probably true. I have to reboot it a couple of times per week - the touch screen stops working, or the screen just turns black when I am receiving or making a call. Sometimes I have to resort to removing the battery. A co-worker with a Nexus One is having similar problems, so it is not that my specific device is defective.
As much as I hate Apple, my wife's IPhone 3GS hasn't had any problems whatsoever and she's had it for longer.
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Is that bricked bricked or just "bricked"?
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Meh. I switched from Apple products to Android after every single Apple product I had recently (iPod touch, 2 iPod nanos, iPod classic) all stopped working in about a year. My iPod nanos would also tend to reboot without warning and for no reason a couple times a week. My Archos 5 with Android hasn't had a single problem since the day I bought it, other than ones I've caused (leaving it in the pocket of the hoodie I used as a pillow and cracking the touch screen -- but even that was a $20 fix)
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the screen just turns black when I am receiving or making a call
I believe it's supposed to do that, but only when you hold it up to your head. So, you could be doing something that confuses the sensors. I know that if I put too much of my hand over the screen while on a call, the screen will go black on my HTC Thunderbolt. Hitting "Home" solves that for me, as once the phone app doesn't have the focus, it won't black the screen.
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It isn't that, I think. The phone is ringing, but the screen remains black so there is no way to answer. Often I have another problem - it can't hang up; just locks up there and only removing the battery fixes it.
In a strange way it is by far the best phone I have ever had, and by far the most unreliable one :-)
In other news. . . (Score:2)
When you include Yugos, Trabants, and Ladas, foreign cars have much worse reliability than Ford.
I really hate it when the media writes dumbassed articles like this. "Let's compare phones made by 30 different companies with a phone made by 1 company and see if there are quality variations." Abject stupidity.
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But it is ok to compare sales on those terms, even though 18 months of Android "winning" has still not brought even 1/20th of the iOS revenue to Android developers? The gap is still growing, not narrowing.
I agree it is not fair or relevant to compare devices from 30 manufactures on a wide variety of OS versions to one or two devices from one manufacture. It is always a meaningless comparison.
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In a comparison of operating systems, it's fair to compare sales of one operating system to another. In a comparison of phone design and build quality, it's stupid to compare phones using one operating system to phones using another. Compare phones by brand, not by type (unless you're willing to admit that Toyota is crap because Yugo made hatchbacks too). The operating system has absolutely nothing to do with the design and build quality of the physical hardware.
Is this surprising? (Score:2)
Time distortion (Score:2)
Windows phone 7?? A year?
Try since November 8, 2010, for the USA.
7 months or so. Not even close to 'nearly a year.'
A carrier feature, not a problem (Score:2)
Android at 50% market share (Score:2)
Apple camp nervous and running amok. Unable to comprehend 12% vs. 50% market share* and how it relates to service calls.
[*] - http://www.pcworld.com/article/226339/android_market_share_growth_accelerating_nielsen_finds.html [pcworld.com]
BAD METRIC (Score:2)
A fundamentally broken metric: "percent of all technical support calls".
A completely incorrect interpretation of that metric: "Android Phones More Prone To Hardware Problems".
If you want to argue that "Android Phones More Prone To Hardware Problems", then you need to know the number phones of each type that have hardware failures, and total phones of each type (or possibly total usage hours of each) -- and neither of those are known or estimated here. Other possible explanations for higher "percent of all t
9 percent for Windows Phone 7 devices (Score:2)
So just 18 Windows Phone 7 devices were affected versus, what, thousands of Android devices? That's pretty good for Microsoft!
well duh (Score:2)
Stupid news title (Score:2)
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Exactly. Compare to Win6/6.5 and you'd get lots of mediocre phones. I've had about equally poor results with 2 Win6 phones and my G1, oddly enough all made by HTC. So who funded this study?
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Not exactly. It's more like saying Windows PCs are more prone to hardware problems than Macs. With the iPhone and Blackberries, you have devices from one manufacturer with a relatively high standard of quality control. Windows Phone isn't so rigid, but still, the companies currently manufacturing Windows Phone devices are on the relatively high-end.
With Android, pretty much any schmuck can sell a cheap tablet with a resistive touch screen running the OS - you only need Google's approval to ship with the
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This.
These stats do not say anything about how many handsets had hardware issues. The stats given relate to how many support calls there are.
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Bad experiences with crappy hardware running Android will tarnish the Android name in the consumer's mind.
That what.
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What "Android name in the consumer's mind"?
People see TV commercials, posters, and other material promoting marks and models of handsets, such as Droid, EVO, Galaxy, etc., not Android.
The same is true for the competition: consumers purchase iPhones and iPods, not "iOS devices."
-dZ.
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Bad experiences with crappy hardware running Android will tarnish the Android name in the consumer's mind.
Only if consumers are buying an Android phone. The advertising I see usually pushes the carrier or the manufacturer. Android is a bullet statement. For example, driving in to work I heard an Ad for Cricket offering the Ascend phone "powered by Android" (manufactured by Chinese company Huawei - I suspect this is right in line with the subject at hand). Which leads me to wonder what name will come to mind if the consumer looks at their device and decides it's a crappy phone. Will they blame Cricket, Huaw
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RIM I'm sure has a lot of software related support questions, that would probably be the reason for their low % of hardware based support calls.
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Well sure, them too. But mostly the Illuminati.
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Now, PR people do understand this, and they do sometimes drop hit pieces. But the natural defense mechanism is that there are people who actively follow this stuff and look for those kinds of shenanigans. For example, here's a story that accuses the Obama administration of feeding a story to the WaPo [pajamasmedia.com]. When PR people try to stir up a story, it's very easy to be caught out, so that naturally limits them to dropping a few hints.
The article is over five years old, but I think it still is quite applicable today: The Submarine [paulgraham.com]. The trick seems to be having awareness of this manipulation, looking for it, and being able to communicate those findings. Politics breeds that kind of watchdog (especially in the current environment). But I don't think you'll find it in every arena on every issue.
That's not to say your view lacks insight. I suspect there is a lot of news that is news because it was in the news - especially within tech.
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I'll see your anecdote and raise you a personal observation:
My wife has had a Storm since the month they were released and has had no issues at all.
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The Storm units sucked (everyone I know who bought one either hated it or has it stashed in a drawer with the rest of their defunct tech), but you could play tennis with a Curve 8330, walk away from the match, and continue making calls on it without thinking twice.
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No, its an issue of course.
The problem is ... that even if you held it incorrectly, it was STILL in the top 3 of reception quality and ability to not drop calls.
Meaning that yes, it drops calls more often if you hold it like you normally would ... however ... it STILL DOES BETTER THAN THE COMPETITION on its baad days.
So from a practical perspective ... if on the iPhone 4's shittiest of days, it STILL does better than most of the other phones in its class, which means its a non-issue from a practical perspec