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Operating Systems Android Google IOS Software Apple Hardware Technology

iOS Devices Failed More Often Than Android Units During Q3, Says Report (phonearena.com) 95

A report from Blannco Technology Group has revealed that iOS devices failed more often than Android devices in the third quarter. Specifically, 62% of Apple iPhone and Apple iPad units suffered failures, compared to the 47% failure rate tallied by Android devices. Phone Arena reports: Apps crashed on 65% of iOS powered devices compared to just 25% of Android models. The breakdown for the iOS devices shows the Apple iPhone 6 with a leading 13% failure rate, followed by the Apple iPhone 6s (9%), Apple iPhone 5s (9%) and the Apple iPad Air 2 (2%). In the report, some of the blame for the high iOS failure rate is placed on the iOS 10 update. Among Android devices, the LeEco Le 2 had a 13% failure rate to lead the way. Two Xiaomi devices were next, both with a 9% rate. Those models were the Redmi 3S and the Redmi Note 3. Rounding out the top five are the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (5%) and the Lenovo Vibe K5 Note (4%). Android flavored models faced problems with the battery (seen on 7% of devices) and issues with the screen (6%). Samsung branded phones and tablets had the most Android failures among manufacturers at 11%. That was followed by the 4% registered by Xiaomi built products. Crashed apps by far was the leading problem for iOS users in North America during the quarter. Worldwide, the rising temperature of an iDevice was the biggest issue. Android users in North America had to deal with crashed apps (21%) more than other problems. Worldwide, those using an Android phone or tablet were most likely to face an issue with the USB port. Last quarter, iOS devices had a 58% failure rate, which marked the first time that Apple's devices had a lower performance rate compared to Android.
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iOS Devices Failed More Often Than Android Units During Q3, Says Report

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  • Dumb Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @06:10AM (#53312811)

    Given that we spent the majority of the previous version of this story [slashdot.org] bitching about how the math is rubbish and that the story is clickbait, why the hell would you bring it back?

    Nothing's changed. The math is still rubbish, and trying to claim that 62% of iOS devices failed is dumb enough that it makes one's head want to implode. Please go look up the definition of insanity [brainyquote.com] and then go sit in a corner and think about how many man hours of time across the globe has just been wasted by posting this dumb story on Slashdot.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's stupid wording to refer to app crashes as "failures", and it's pretty dumb to compare app crashes with battery and screen problems (by which I assume they're talking about hardware failures); pokemon go crashing is a pretty minor inconvenience, compared to a dead battery or screen. It's a shame, because there's probably actually some interesting stats in there somewhere, but it's difficult to get at them past the bullshit.

      • Remember it's Apple. So dumb dumb downed is needed for the Fanboys. Besides, you'll hear the Fanboys jump up n down about the Samsung battery blow up, yet they'll sweep under the rug know Apple batteries have started to do the same (happened to a friend).
    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @10:02AM (#53313521)
      OP is absolutely correct. I was reading the summary and thinking "WTF?" The math is absolute rubbish. BeauHD, if that isn't obvious to you, you need to stop personally selecting stories with stats in them to post on the front page of slashdot.

      The whole point of having reader submissions which are first vetted by other readers, and the cream of the crop elevated by editors to the front page, is to filter out crap articles like this one. It keeps the signal to noise ratio up. You (and the other "editors" doing the same) are short-circuiting that process by posting stories you find interesting straight to the front page. Please stop.
      • Agreed. This is 3rd of his superfluous stories in 3 days I saw. Please tell me if you know a way to ignore all stories sent by specific person? I would use it immediately.
        • by subk ( 551165 )

          Please tell me if you know a way to ignore all stories sent by specific person? I would use it immediately.

          Judging by the front page of late, you would have dry spells where there were no stories all day (or for a couple days) because the only person even posting them is BeauHD or msmash. Pardon the buzzword, but you fuckers need to bring back the old ecosystem. /. has become homogenized.

    • Also funny that the report before that (which had much better results for iOS devices than for any Android phone) didn't get any mention on Slashdot. Of course the math was already rubbish in that one - but that wasn't the reason why there wasn't a story, now was it? http://bgr.com/2016/05/11/android-vs-iphone-stability-study-q1-2016/ [bgr.com]
    • by Bobtree ( 105901 )

      Please don't repeat the insanity misquote. It's garbage.

  • by ctrl-alt-canc ( 977108 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @06:17AM (#53312823)
    Samsung Galaxy 7 line of products will soon rebalance the percentage.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18, 2016 @07:09AM (#53312901)

      Not that many failed.. Samsung recalled them early enough. Whereas with Apple devices, they simply pretended issues like antenna gate never existed

      • by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @08:25AM (#53313091)

        Not that many failed.. Samsung recalled them early enough. Whereas with Apple devices, they simply pretended issues like antenna gate never existed

        They had to, your phone blowing up is a bit more hazardous to your health and less suited to being ignored than 'antenna-gate'. Samsung seemed to be perfectly happy to ignore less explosive FUBARs surrounding their products such as complaints from their customers when they orphaned the early Galaxy Tab line. Samsung is not exactly the angel of innocence when it comes to stiffing their customers over the flawed products they sold them.

      • From this it appears Samsung are the more honourable in dealings with customers. Point noted.

    • Samsung Galaxy 7 line of products will soon rebalance the percentage.

      Depends on how you look at it. Something like... 20 of them failed, right? And millions were sold. That makes a really, really low failure rate.

      And this is how statistics are twisted.

      • Yeah, but I'm sure that Samsung may have looked at the problem and decided that scrapping untold amounts of R&D and product design and manufacturing may have been worth it because they knew what the actual problem was, and what the real failure rate would be in time.

        Do you think they would just shitcan their flagship product and have nothing to sell in that space for months if it wasn't an actual problem?

        20 were confirmed to fail within weeks of launch. What would the numbers be at 6 months? A year?

        • Samsung is the only entity that knows how bad it could have gotten...

          That's sad, kind of erodes one's faith in the super competent geek mythos hollywood has built up around us. I thought that, given a mere hint of what might be wrong, some genius with a multimeter out there would be able to tell us in detail exactly what went wrong. Failing that, some mole in digital city. Anyway, pulling the product is the honorable (and costly) thing to do, well beyond any remedial action we have seen Apple or Microsoft undertake. Makes me more likely to look seriously at Samsung handsets

        • Do you think they would just shitcan their flagship product and have nothing to sell in that space for months if it wasn't an actual problem?

          The OP didn't say it wasn't a problem. He said the actual failure rates were low. When "failure" means burning people alive you don't have to have a high failure rate to initiate a product recall.

      • Samsung Galaxy 7 line of products will soon rebalance the percentage.

        Depends on how you look at it. Something like... 20 of them failed, right? And millions were sold. That makes a really, really low failure rate. And this is how statistics are twisted.

        20 failed? That must be the number for those "we found the problem, this phone will not explode , we promise" version of the Note 7.

        Heck, even Samsung claimed 35 confirmed cases when they started the exchange program to that version. And that's how statistics are twisted

        • 20 failed? That must be the number for those "we found the problem, this phone will not explode , we promise" version of the Note 7.

          Heck, even Samsung claimed 35 confirmed cases when they started the exchange program to that version. And that's how statistics are twisted

          20. 35. Out of millions. The point I was making was that what actually failed was a tiny portion of the whole. That doesn't speak to how many would have failed given a few more months or years of being used. It just addresses actually

          • I'm not defending Samsung, nor the Note 7 product. Just pointing out that if you're counting failures, including Note 7 won't get you a percentage increase.

            How would we know? Blannco Technology doesn't say a thing about how they get to there numbers. All we know is that they do it in a way so that the total failure rate for iOS devices is much higher than that for the iOS device model with the highest failure rate. So or all we know the Note 7 may raise the Android failure rate to 114%.

            • I'm not defending Samsung, nor the Note 7 product. Just pointing out that if you're counting failures, including Note 7 won't get you a percentage increase.

              How would we know? Blannco Technology doesn't say a thing about how they get to there numbers. All we know is that they do it in a way so that the total failure rate for iOS devices is much higher than that for the iOS device model with the highest failure rate. So or all we know the Note 7 may raise the Android failure rate to 114%.

              Because a failure rate of a few dozens of phones out of several millions shipped isn't a number that raises anything that isn't already effectively zero.

              • Because a failure rate of a few dozens of phones out of several millions shipped isn't a number that raises anything that isn't already effectively zero.

                Again, we don't know how they calculate "failure" - and you keep ignoring that in fact every single Note 7 made is no longer working after just a few weeks.

          • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            20. 35. Out of millions. The point I was making was that what actually failed was a tiny portion of the whole. That doesn't speak to how many would have failed given a few more months or years of being used. It just addresses actually failures.

            It was 35 when first reported in the news. When the recall finally started, it was up over 100 known/verified cases.

            And the replacement phones was starting to edge up into 10 or so before Samsung completely scrapped it.

            Yes, of millions, because the first cases started

          • The point I was making was that what actually failed was a tiny portion of the whole.

            But proportionately more than other products and sufficient to indicate an endemic design issue. Even a single battery explosion is enough to make the news, just like a single airplane crash. Well, maybe it even makes more news than a cessna crash these days. I don't think that Samsung's remedy was excessive at all, given that there is no doubt that these events took place and the reason is faulty engineering of the handset, not the battery (otherwise the phones would have been refurbished instead of the en

      • Well, if they recalled the millions of them, then technically they all failed. Otherwise, they'd still be in use.

        So, that's a really, really high failure rate.

        All depends on how you look at it.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I would consider these numbers rubbish. What exactly is a failure? Not sticking up for IOS or Apple here, but if these numbers were actually true. I don't see many users of IOS or Android still buying either platform. The last real comparisons I have read that make sense still show IOS being more stable that Android devices overall. Apps crash less on IOS, hardware is better matched to the OS and while Android in my opinion is gaining in stability and performance. I think the edge still goes to Apple and IO

  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @07:09AM (#53312899)

    Failure of an app is not a failure of the device, or of the operating system.

    • Precisely. After I updated my iPhone 7 to iOS 10, Monopoly stopped working for a few days, until I deleted it and reinstalled days later.
    • Failure of an app is not a failure of the device, or of the operating system.

      TFA article is just making claims about users' perception of stability. You you think a user cares that their Facebook app crashes because of a flaw in the app, a flaw in the iOS SDK, a flaw in the underlying system libraries used to implement the SDK, a flaw in the kernel, or a flaw in the hardware? They don't.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The amounts that they charge for these phones is outrageous. They should be selling for less than $500. When I can keep my iphone 6 in perfect condition in an otterbox case, yet is gets screen damage from a swollen battery, then there is something wrong with the industry. They are able to have bad parts and design flaws just like the computer industry, but people's desperation for this device allows them to take advantage of the public with very high prices.

    Now they price gouge further by only giving dea

    • If you are paying that much for a phone, it's worth getting it shielded. Every phone I buy, I get it a matte screen protector, as well as a wallet case. Also, at home, whenever it's sitting idle, I put it back on charge. That way, I have a full battery when I need to have a long conversation.
    • Why spend the resources and energy on trying to make the customer *want* to stay forever, when they already have to stay forever. It's not like there's a big range of choice out there - get fucked by Verizon or AT&T for the best coverage, or get fucked slightly less by Sprint for coverage that isn't as good.

      It's not like you're going to stop having a mobile phone.

    • The amounts that they charge for these phones is outrageous. They should be selling for less than $500.

      No, they should be selling for twice as much, because being separated from their cash is a liberating experience for an ifan.

  • Pokemon Go? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BasilBrush ( 643681 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @08:06AM (#53313033)

    Apparently, the reliability of mobile phones is now measured by how often Pokemon Go Android crashes vs Pokemon Go iOS.

    Braindead.

    • Apparently, the reliability of mobile phones is now measured by how often Pokemon Go Android crashes vs Pokemon Go iOS.

      Braindead.

      Gotta crash them all... Seriously, this study has a number of flaws that make it useless; from calling any app crash a failure, to merely running slowly, to presenting the data in a way that makes comparisons impossible. In addition, there is no mention of sample sizes. I'm surprised they didn't include a "the phone failed to turn on after we left it running for a couple f days..." as a failure to get 100% failure rtes for all phones.

    • It's not really the fault of the device manufacturer, but it sure detracts from the user experience of of the device. I'd sure love to have a mobile device where the apps crash less often. It seems like for some reason we are repeating all the same mistakes we made on desktop operating systems years ago. Maybe in another 20 years we'll be at the point where the mobile platforms are mature enough to not crash all the time.

      • You're right - it's not the fault of Apple / Google / Samsung / HTC / Etc. that bad apps are bad. And users are smart enough to know this - they have the ability to know that if the shitty app they just downloaded crashes, it's a problem with the app, not the phone.

        Now, if the whole phone reboots - that's a problem with the phone. But I'm guessing from this "study" that we're not talking about a whole kernel panic and reboot situation. We're talking about some piece of shit FaceTube app that shits the be

        • by vux984 ( 928602 )

          At the same time though, a generic consumer doesn't really care whose fault it is they just care which one is more reliable.

          If all you do is facebook and twitter, then if facebook and twitter crashes markedly less on platform A then on platform B, then you'll probably be happier with A. It doesn't matter whehter the issue is flaws of platform B, or if actual fault lies with facebook and twitter writing shitty code for platform B. Makes no difference.

          The end result is the user of platform B puts up with more

    • Is the Pokémon Go fad over? Or is it still as bad as ever?
    • by fedos ( 150319 )
      The supposed rationale Apple's walled garden is ensuring that apps meet their quality standards. If apps that crash a lot are making it into the app store then it's on Apple as much as it is on the developer.
  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @08:10AM (#53313043) Homepage Journal
    How would any company possibly know all that information? Apple would know the iOS data, and the Android app developers would know the Android data, but they sure aren't sharing it with "Blannco Technology Group". These "research firms" need to go out and get a real job.
    • by guruevi ( 827432 )

      They most likely share data from 3rd party ad network crash handlers which are rife with bugs themselves and often used by developers to generate ad revenue. The story makes it look like more than half of the devices structurally fail (e.g. Need replacement) while it's 60% of the apps they track generate a crash handler which doesn't say much for either platform.

    • How would any company possibly know all that information?

      Telemetry....

  • Unlike the small-minded imitators in the Android camp, we have the courage to understand that 'failure' is in fact "Operating Different"(tm).
  • Trash article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Coditor ( 2849497 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @08:24AM (#53313089)
    Samsung Note 7's occasionally exploding is a failure. An app crashing is generally the fault of the developer; even crashes derived from the OS is a software failure not a device failure since software can be updated. In general on both platforms 1 in 50 users each day experience a crash (2%). If you stupidly add up how many people have an app crash any time an entire year compared to the total number of devices and print that "statistic" you wind up with this article.
  • by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @08:31AM (#53313107) Homepage

    Were any models banned from aircraft?

  • The rate of failure of the iOS devices seems to follow the rate of ownership. I wonder if they even bothered to normalize the data? In other words, if among Apple devices, most people own and use the iPhone 6, that will of course it will have the most instances of failure. To get meaningful data, you'd have to adjust for that.
    • Make no mistake - there is absolutely no "meaningful data" presented in this piece of trash article. Anyone that equates an app crash with total hardware failure is selling a story.

  • I am not surprised in the slightest that apps crash more frequently on iOS than Android devices. It is an order of magnitude more difficult to automate app testing on iOS than Android. You cannot emulate an iOS device like you can an Android device (no, the Simulator doesn't count - if it requires a special build, it doesn't count), and Apple's OS updates frequently break test automation. You also cannot simply programmatically control actions and read screen state on iOS without extra signing steps in iOS

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