Report names smartphone models with the highest failure rates
Bad news for Xiaomi
By Chris Blossam 10 comments
Why it matters: While it’s something companies look to avoid, some phones are more prone to failure than others. Thanks to security firm Blancco's report, we now know which smartphones had the highest failure rates throughout Q4 2017.
The Mobile Device Repair and Security report reveals that Samsung (34 percent), Xiaomi (13 percent), and Motorola (9 percent) were the three Android manufactures with the highest diagnostics failure rates. But while the Korean firm’s rate is more than double second-place Xiaomi’s, it’s still a huge decrease from its 61 percent in Q2 2017 and 53 percent in Q3 2017, so at least Samsung is heading in the right direction. It’s worth noting that the top two firms account for largest number of Android sales, which means the results are slightly skewed as they have more phones out there that could potentially fail.
When it comes to individual models, Xiaomi’s Redmi 4 takes the unwanted top spot with a 9 percent failure rate. Despite being the worst-performing brand, the highest Samsung model is the Galaxy S7 in fifth place with just 3 percent, though it does have five models on the list.
The report also looks at the iOS platform. It names the iPhone 6 as the Apple handset with the highest failure rate (26 percent). Interestingly, the failure rate for some iPhone models are a lot higher than those of Android devices.
When it came to the reasons behind these failure rates, it seems performance was the biggest issue for Android users, which could be related to the number of underpowered, budget handsets that are on the market. The camera and microphone also caused many people problems. iPhone users named Bluetooth and WiFi as their biggest issues.
User Comments: 10
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3 people liked this |roberthi
This is a failure report from a vendor that stands to gain by making things look a certain way. I'm not saying they were dishonest (no idea), but take the data with a grain of salt.
OutlawCecil
Problem is quantity of phones out there affects these numbers. Samsung is highest but they also sell a TON of phones, hence more need repairs. Xiaomi also sells phones for 1/4 the cost so you can just buy new ones if they fail and you've still saved money. I like that OnePlus is at the bottom. Go them!
2 people liked this |
Uncle Al
Uncle Al
I'd like to see this reviewed and commented on by Consumers Union, then it might carry a bit more weight.
1 person liked this |
Kibaruk TechSpot Paladin
Kibaruk TechSpot Paladin
This is a failure report from a vendor that stands to gain by making things look a certain way. I'm not saying they were dishonest (no idea), but take the data with a grain of salt.
Problem is quantity of phones out there affects these numbers. Samsung is highest but they also sell a TON of phones, hence more need repairs. Xiaomi also sells phones for 1/4 the cost so you can just buy new ones if they fail and you've still saved money. I like that OnePlus is at the bottom. Go them!
Everything was said already. The only way this data would be useful is if they had taken into consideration the amount of devices sold and the stats in a ratio of sold vs repaired %.
mkstark
How is this measured? 34% of all failures are samsung? Isn't that biased based on phones sold? Maybe Samsung sells so many phones because of the low failure rate.
Common sense: take the number of phones sold and divide it by the number of failures. That would give you a failure rate. NO WAY 34% of Samsung phones FAIL. No one would buy them!
This stupid research takes the number of phones sold PERIOD so the % can add up to 100% of ALL failures. This skews the data against top sellers.
The failure rates are not very useful either. 3% failure rate is statistically minimal. The only lessons to be learned in this entire stupid article are:
1. Samsung sells a lot of phones
2. Avoid specific phones that have double the fail rate of other phones.
1 person liked this |PinothyJ
Is it a good thing, or extremely worrying thing when you phone manufacturer does not feature on the list :P
PinothyJ
No, I would say that the number are correct. There were many generations of Samsung phone that were susceptible to such hardware glitches such as the magenta line down the screen. Many, many devices suffered from this and this is considered a failure because the device is failing to operate as designed. It is not a catastrophic failure, but still a warranty claimable repair.
So if you were to have your phone repaired for something that was not caused by you or the environment, That would be considered a failure against that company, and what is being measured.
The figures for Samsung used to be as high as 60% so the 34% is improving.
Mr Majestyk
Problem is quantity of phones out there affects these numbers. Samsung is highest but they also sell a TON of phones, hence more need repairs. Xiaomi also sells phones for 1/4 the cost so you can just buy new ones if they fail and you've still saved money. I like that OnePlus is at the bottom. Go them!
Bingo, we need failure rate per number of phones. Also are they major failures or minor ones?
Never had a single issue on my Samsung Galaxy S, S3, S7 Edge, but my LG G2 had a dodgy GPS which was a well known issue LG refused to fix.
Ontario pundit
Ugh. Will I get these few minutes of my life back?
iPhone 6 has the largest number of failures of all iPhone models? Hmm. Let me guess, it's also the most common model in the wild and was three years old last year. Surprise, surprise that it was responsible for a quarter of iPhone repairs.
Or, a third of all Android phones that fail were Samsung. Hmm. Isn't Samsung the biggest manufacturer?
Or more iPhones failed in North America than Android... Hmm. Perhaps iPhone dominates in the richest market in the world?
These numbers are almost meaningless without market share data. You can't infer anything about failure RATES. Using the word rates in the graph was wrong.
This was sloppy journalism at best or deceitful advertising at worst.
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