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SquareTrade's Report on Simple Vs. Smartphone Reliability

SquareTrade's Report on Smartphone reliability:  Are Smartphones a Smart Choice?

A new study from SquareTrade indicates that smartphones are 50% more likely to fail than simple phones over a 3-year period.

SquareTrade’s data comes from our experience with providing over 100,000 cell phones with warranty coverage.

SquareTrade’s claims database indicates there is an increased material cost of upgrading to a feature-packed smartphone: 1 in 3 smartphones malfunction under normal use within the first 3 years, compared to about 1 in 5 simple phones in the same time period. And this does NOT include accidental damage from dropping your cell phone or getting it wet.

Why the difference in reliability?

Our experience servicing cell phones indicates that simple phones are just that—simple. They have fewer components to malfunction. We see only 3 basic things that fail under normal use on a plain-jane simple phone: the LCD screen, the internal connections to the motherboard and the power port jack.

The biggest problem SquareTrade observes are internal disconnections of the antenna, speaker, or microphone with over 50% of claims relating to a lost connection to the chip. Coming in second at about 25% of claims are broken power ports. And in a close third place at just over 20% are failures related to screens going white, black or in-between.

Smartphones, on the other hand, are bedeviled by precisely what makes you buy them: features.  The added complexity of Bluetooth connectivity, touch pads, full keyboards and big hard drives means that more things can, and will, fail.

Here is how smartphones are dying:
#1 – Loss of features: whether it turns on but doesn’t respond to your frantic button pressing, or doesn’t allow any calls, or won’t connect to Bluetooth, or the touch screen is nonresponsive, roughly 30% of failures we see are related to internal components not working.
#2 – The power port: whether its corrosion, the connector becoming too loose or the internal wire to the motherboard breaking, this represents another 30% of failures observed of phones no longer being able to charge – even after you replace the battery!
#3 – You can’t hear them, they can’t hear you, or you are being disconnected randomly – we see about 20% of failures related to the speaker, microphone or antenna losing connection to the motherboard…and a phone isn’t very helpful as a one-way radio.
#4 – The big screen: the phone works, but about 15% of claims relate to the display back-light going out or the LCD cable is disconnected or gets streaky.
#5 – And the remaining claims relate to a broad assortment of failures such as buttons that fall off, broken USB ports or a camera takes rotten pictures all of a sudden.

So let’s put how Smartphones can leave you Smarting in perspective.

Before you decide to splurge on a $400+ smartphone like an iPhone or Treo…consider this: The cool factor of a smartphone's added features comes with not-so-cool costs that start mounting from the day you buy the phone.

• Price of Phone:
  You will generally spend $200 to $500+ for an iPhone, Blackberry or other smartphone. And that often includes some heavy discounting by carriers (e.g., Verizon, AT&T) so they can lock you into a two-year commitment for their phone service.  However, if you need to replace your phone for any reason (i.e., it fails in a year), you will have to pay full price for a new smartphone (more like $400 to $800).
• Data Costs Big Money:
  On top of your basic phone bill, most carriers charge you a pricey additional data fee so you can access the Internet, download music, send/receive email on your flashy big display.  My quick check shows Verizon Wireless charges an additional $25 to $45 a month for data plans, Sprint charges an additional $20 a month, and T-Mobile charges an additional $20 to $30 a month for their data plans. This is really the place where a smartphone adds up big time!
• Lower Reliability:
  Our claims data indicates you have roughly a 31% chance of having your smartphone fail over three years vs. only a 22% chance with a simple phone. And, if you aren’t ready to resign for a full 2-year commitment, get ready to pay full retail price for the replacement phone. A fairly priced warranty really makes sense given this reliability data.

Let’s add up the cost of a smart phone:

	Simple Phone	Smartphone
Phone price	Simple phones are often free or less than $100 with a 2-year plan	Smartphones generally will set you back $200-$500 when you sign up for a 2-year service plan
Data fee	None (other than text messaging which you will pay for both for simple or smartphone)	$20 to $45 extra per month (that adds up to $720 to $1,600 over 3 years)
Reliability cost	We are seeing roughly 22% odds you will have replace your phone over 3-year time period	We are seeing 31% odds you will have to spend replace…at full retail that is $400 to $800
Extra you spent for that smartphone over 3 years ...		$1,100-$2,600 MORE than a simple phone

So maybe that simple phone you have is looking pretty darn smart now.

If you do buy a smartphone, SquareTrade offers warranties at over 40% less than what you pay Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. SquareTrade’s warranty on a smartphone is a smart decision. Know you can say “NO” to the overpriced warranty offer from wireless stores and big box retailers.

You will always find the best pricing and the best no-hassle warranty at www.squaretrade.com. Just visit SquareTrade within 30 days of buying a new cell phone or most any other consumer electronic or appliances you buy no matter where you buy the item.

Watch out iPhone, the BlackBerry goes BOLD.

Bringing sexy back.  BlackBerry takes on the iPhone with the new BlackBerry Bold (BlackBerry 9000), boasting a more powerful 624MHz Intel PXA270 processor (previous BlackBerrys had 312MHz processors).  Weighing in at 4.7 ounces and at 4.5 inches tall by 2.6 inches wide by half an inch deep, the BlackBerry Bold features a half-VGA (480x320 pixel resolution) and a 65,000-color display along with 1G of memory built in.  Rumor has it that the BlackBery Bold was designed to interest C-level executives with a 3G device that has GPS and Wi-Fi, but everyone can appreciate that the device is iTunes-compatible.  And for the snap-happy, there's the requisite digicam (2-MP) with a "flash" LED light, of course. 

You can find the BlackBerry Bold this summer at AT&T carriers (with more carriers to be announced) for around $300-$400.  For an additional $35.99-$47.99, you can protect your new purchase with 3 years of warranty coverage with SquareTrade.  Or better yet, protected it from accidental damage from handling at only $74.99-$99.99 for 3 years!  It could use a little extra protection - take this CrackBerry music video for example.

* * *

One more thing - Steve Jobs is expected to announce the 3G iPhone at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9, 2008 so you might want to wait for the dramatic unveiling of the new 3G iPhone.  Excited yet?  Personally, I can't wait for that iTunes "security update" which will mysteriously render the BlackBerry Bold's iTunes-to-Blackberry-sync useless.  Three cheers for competition! 

Super-Cheap AT&T smartphones at Amazon!

Hope you haven't gone out and bought a BlackBerry Curve lately, because Amazon just posted a sale where every single AT&T smartphone (sans iPhone, naturally) now costs just one cent.

Some of these are priced at one cent, and some are done through full-price rebates, but the deals include things like the Pantech Duo, the AT&T Tilt, the BlackBerry Curve, Curve Titanium, Pearl, and 8820, the Palm Treo, Samsung Blackjacks, LG Shine, and a whole mess of RAZRs if you're so inclined.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  You can even get a $75 rebate on that one-cent Curve Titanium with a plan activation, so they'll pay you $75 to get the phone. 

And naturally, you can put a 3-Year SquareTrade warranty on any or all of these for about half what AT&T would charge you for cell phone insurance... assuming they offer it on these phones.  We know they don't on the BlackBerrys.  Check out our reviews if you like... we sure would.

This is Amazon, after all, so there's no telling how long this is going to last.  They'll change it the second they feel like changing it.

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Motorola Roadmap leaked.

Whoopsie!  Somebody at Motorola's beleaguered mobile division let go of an internal roadmap for nine handsets they plan to launch this year, and only one of them looks vaguely RAZRish. 

A few of these - the U9, the W270, the E8 - are already out in one country or another, but the big dog of the pack looks to be the ZN5, a Montavista Linux-run phone (2.6.1) with a 2.4" screen, 5-megapixel camera, TV-Out and a "morphing keypad" that sounds a lot like adaptive touch buttons that change depending on what phone function you're using at the time.  Fancy.

We're also curious to learn more about the VE75, a slider with a 2.6" screen, 2-megapixel camera and, most interestingly, dual sim card support.  And as far as we can tell, the L800T candybar phone is set to become Motorola's first TD-SCDMA device (that's a Chinese 3G standard, y'all); it sports a 1.9" screen, 2-megapixel camera, GSM/GPRS/TD-SCDMA support, bluetooth, etc.

No dates or prices yet on this stuff, of course... we weren't even suppose to see this stuff, after all.  But when they do show up, rest assured that your SquareTrade warranty will probably run you about half what any carrier's insurance plan would.  And we won't stick you with a refurb for your money, either. 

It's a fairly ambitious roll-out.  We'll have to wait and see if it makes a dent in Motorola's recent financial woes.

More details at Uberphones.

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The Verizon XV6900 is here to white up your life.

Yep, the Verizon Wireless XV6900 just dropped and is currently available on Verizon's website in a cool, clean, almost Apple-ish white package.  And baby, it's all about the Touching.

It boasts, for example, Verizon's patented TouchFLO Technology on that 2.8" touchscreen, which includes a virtual QWERTY touch keyboard, though basic navigation is done by its also-patented Touch Cube (or "control pad," as we call it).  Windows Mobile 6 Professional runs the show on a 256MB hard drive, expandable to 8GB if you fork out for the right microSD card, with a 2.0-megapixel camera, broadband and Bluetooth access, and 210 minutes talk-time on a standard battery (upgradeable to 360) rounding out the already-rounded touch package.

The "online deal" knocks $100 off the price, and another $50 rebate means you can put this baby in your pocket for about $250, plus the obligatory two year contract.  That also means its 3-Year SquareTrade warranty will run you $30, or ten bucks a year, or a little more if you want Accidental Damage coverage to go with that.  Three years of Verizon's cell phone insurance?  Starts at $72, and goes up exponentially from there.  And our service has better customer reviews.

The real mystery is why Verizon thinks they need to put "wireless" to the XV6900's name.  Is anybody going to think it comes with a cord?

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Samsung's Instinct seems dull, may get sharper.

Samsung's not copying the iPhone, they're responding to market demands.  Ah, so that's why the (distinctly iPhone-ish) Samsung Instinct got a red carpet roll-out at CTIA and a $100 million ad campaign to sell it to every man, woman and child on Earth.  Good thing it's all coming off without a hitch... except for a few hitches.

No lie, Samsung's made a nice looking phone, and the Instinct is bringing an iPhoney candy bar in for under $300 retail (they're not quoting exact prices just yet).  That's a fairly major achievement.  It's built to run on Sprint's EV-DO Rev A broadband, packs a 2.0-megapixel camera, and has a microSD slot that takes it up to 8GB of memory.  Music, email, internet, games: check.

It's also sporting a haptic feedback system - something the iPhone sorely lacks - that makes typing on the virtual keyboard much easer, though we're hearing the touch interface is a little sticky sometimes.  There's also some weird things going on with the UI, like mandatory portrait views for navigation and landscape for web browsing, where the iPhone lets you switch on the fly. 

Viewing a webpage has its own special trick: you tilt the phone to scroll up, down, left, right.  Except the Instinct uses a camera to detect tilts, not an accelerometer, so people who initially tested it out in the dark and dangerous CTIA exhibition hall couldn't get it to scroll no matter how much they shook the stupid thing.  But Gizmodo just put up a video proving it does indeed work.  Under optimum lighting conditions, anyway.

The Instinct will hit the mainstream this summer, by which time Samsung's expected to hammer out the kinks.  If they can do it, you're looking at an under-$300 iPhone that's not slaved to AT&T, and if anyone survives the marketing push, that could equal a RAZR-like splash.  You even won't have to jailbreak it, so you'll get the full 3 Year SquareTrade warranty, and Accidental Damage coverage will be an option (not the case on unlocked phones). 

We've got our fingers crossed on this one.  Inexpensive coolness appeals to our cheap and fickle hearts.

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AT&T Mobile TV has mobiles to be mobile on.

AT&T wisely decided to not call their mobile television service MediaFLO, with its toilet-flushing connotations, and has gone with AT&T Mobile TV instead.  What it lacks in pizzazz, it more than makes up in descriptiveness.  And they've finally announced what phones you'll get it on.

We all knew the Prada-like LG Vu would be one, and now it's come clear that the Samsung Access is the other.  The Vu is definitely the sports car of the pair, with a wide touchscreen, a 2-megapixel camera, HSDPA, and a microSD slot.  Samsung's Access is likely the budget option, with a much smaller screen and 1.3-megapixel camera. 

AT&T Mobile TV launches with the standard eight chan nels, plus two exclusives to make it different from Verizon's much cooler-sounding VCAST.  We don't know what they are, or what subscriptions will be (it's AT&T, so expect bundles), but that info's bound to show up soon given that these phones are both slated for release within the next month.

Naturally, you can put a SquareTrade warranty on these for about half what AT&T's insurance will run you... assuming AT&T offers insurance, which is not an assumption we'd make with a smart phone.  They're tricky that way, sometimes.

All we can say is Thank Goodness we won't miss The Price Is Right anymore just because we're at work.

   

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Samsung's Anycall Haptic wants Asia's iPhone Cash.

Somehow, we don't think Asia's smarting over the whole "you don't get no iPhone" thing, particularly when Samsung's out there upping the game with their new Anycall Haptic SCH-W420 smart phone. 

Sure, there's the 2-megapixel camera and the Bluetooth 2.0 connectivitiy, but that's not what we're here for, now is it?  No, we want that 3.2" touch-screen, and considering there are only three teeny physical buttons on the whole phone, it's a given that just about everything is going to happen there. 

Then there's that haptic feedback, which doesn't just let you know when you're actually touching a control... there's a 22-sound/vibration vocabulary the Anycall Haptic uses to let you know which controls you're touching and what's happening when you touch them, and that's just five kinds of clever.  We approve.  And they've loaded their new TouchWiz UI onto it with its drag-and-drop customizable widget set, which we've only heard good things about.

Of course, it's only available in Korea at the moment - so any SquareTrade warranty you get for one will be on the unlocked model you bought on eBay - but c'mon now, Samsung... you're really asking $700-$800 for these things?  Let's see you try that in America! 

Please?

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The Nokia N95 8GB gets shipped and (Holy Crap!) tagged.

The last time we talked about the Nokia N95 8GB smartphone, it was New Year's Eve and we were already bleary-eyed and stunned by the grandeur of its feature set, and even more stunned by its ginormous price tag.  Well, now that it's officially here, that $700 estimate has been revised... upward.

Yes.  We couldn't believe it, either.

Nevertheless, Nokia is presenting a top-end slider (without a QWERTY keyboard or touch-screen, we have to mention) for the going rate of $750. 

What do you get for that stack of cash?  For starters, a super-fast HSDPA connection that might actually make downloading movies to your cell phone a practical endeavor, and the 2.8 inch QVGA screen will make it look really good despite the shrinkage.  There's also a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and voice-directed GPS functions, and just for laughs, Nokia's throwing in a free 6-month A-GPS subscription, too. 

Early reviews are calling the N95 8GB a very, very, very good phone, but we're stuck on $750 price tag.  You could get three refurbished 8GB iPhones for that kind of cash!  But if you do want the Holiest of Holies, seriously consider putting a SquareTrade warranty on it, with Accidental Damage coverage... that's way too much money to loose because somebody bumps you while you're crossing the street.

Final verdict: it's one sweet piece of gadget, but daaaaaaaaamn!

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Pantech Duo and LG Trax go Refurb at AT&T.

Well, that didn't take long.  AT&T's been offloading their surplus refurbished phones at a steep discount for a while now, but they just threw a bunch of G3 network smartphones up onto the refurb list, and wouldn't you know, the Pantech Duo is one of them.  Didn't it only come out five months ago?

This is the neat-looking Windows Mobile dual slider phone that came out late last year, with a vertical slide for the dialpad and horizontal slide for the QWERTY keyboard.  It's load-out includes a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, quad-band support, and that lovely HSDPA-level 3G network, which also gives you access to broadband goodies like AT&T Music and Cellular Video, including live mobile TV, all at iPhone-dusting speeds.  The refurb's $99 with a two year contract, half what a new Duo runs.

If the Duo's a little to plastic for your tastes, there's also the slightly older LG Trax.  It's got pretty much the same feature set, but crammed in a mirror-finish flip-phone without the QWERTY.  It's $230 new, and Free as a refurb with the two-year contract.

Again, these are cheap options for people who want the (second hand) latest and greatest, but it's strictly Buyer Beware.  If you stick with AT&T for insurance, you'll be stuck with refurbs until your contract runs out.  A SquareTrade cell phone warranty will run you half their price, and pays out in cash so you can choose your next phone yourself, instead of taking whatever they decide to send you. 

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