Bloggers swallow iPhone 4 screen weakness claim
Display damage data not as transparent as they seem
Analysis You have to take care with statistics, and that is certainly the case with the report from US computer warranty house SquareTrade headlined "iPhone 4 glass breaking 82 per cent more than iPhone 3GS four months in".
Says the company: "SquareTrade analysed iPhone accidents for over 20,000 iPhone 4s covered by SquareTrade Care Plans and found a [sic] 82 per cent increase in reported broken screens compared to the iPhone 3GS."
According to SquareTrade, its numbers show that of the accidental damage suffered by the iPhone 4, 82 per cent of the breaks reported to the company centred on the screen, while 17 per cent were "liquid damage", leaving every other cause to amount to just one percentage point.
For the 3GS, the last two types rise to four per cent (other) and 20 per cent (liquid). Screen damage was cited in 76 per cent of incidents.
SquareTrade sampled 20,000 iPhone 4 owners who have taken out its extended warranty, and 20,000 iPhone 3GS owners who did the same. Its numbers show there were 940 iPhone 4 accident claims and 560 iPhone 3GS claims. Those totals yield 427 iPhone 3GS broken-screen claims and 771 iPhone 4s said to have the same problem, and that's indeed around 82 per cent more.
Now, that the vast majority of claims made against SquareTrade warranties centres on the handset's screen shouldn't surprise anyone - it's the weakest point in any touchscreen phone.
But bear in mind that the iPhone 4 has two glass panels, significantly increasing the chance that, if you have butter fingers, one panel, either front or back, will break when you drop it. And don't forget we're tracking accidents - user failures, if you will - not inherent hardware failures, which we'll come to shortly.
SquareTrade says that "at least a quarter of the broken glass claims involved the back screen". Crunch the numbers, and that's 193 incidents out of 771 broken-glass iPhone 4s recorded by SquareTrade. Obviously, only around 75 per cent of iPhone 4 front screens were reported as damaged, which is close enough to the 3GS score (76 per cent) as to make no odds.
Next page: Inherent strengths
COMMENTS
Love how there was a "you're holding it wrong" reference at the end...
Isn't this the exact point though, Apple have chosen to make their phone out of an unsuitable material - glass, on a surface that doesn't need to be transparent. I'd say that's a design fault.
easy to fix
I'm sure they'll be rushing out a firmware update to address this issue whereby the back is displaying an incorrect coefficient of friction.
Sense?
"Fail to take good care of it and, yes, one or both of its glass panels is more likely to break than the one on the 3GS was. But look after your iPhone 4 and it's no more likely to break than its predecessor."
So, the argument now is "don't drop it and it won't break so much"? The common sense dept just called, they want to hire you.
Re: One thing you forget
I was waiting for this addlepated argument. If we say something positive about the iPhone, we're fanboys. If we say something negative, we're hopelessly biased against Apple.
I have seen *lots* of people using iPhone 4s in London since the handset's launch. Only a handful of them have been cased, and only one with an Apple Bumper.
When asked, most people (a) hadn't heard of the free case programme or (b) didn't want one anyway because they had no reception problems.
I suspect cases are not a factor in all this.
Form over function
It doesn't matter if there are one, two, or 50 plates of glass in an iPhone 4, I shouldn't need to handle the iPhone 4 in any especially different way to other models of phone in the same way that I shouldn't need to put the Mighty Mouse that came with my iMac back in the box after a month and buy a cheepie Logitech because the Mighty Mouse was just unusable.
