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Surveys like this are always very interesting as they show the real truths behind the reliability of products, not just the output of the company’s marketing department.  In this case, SquareTrade, a research group, have taken it open themselves to tackle smart phones and to see their reliability (or lack thereof, as the case may be) over the first year of purchase.  And what better to use than 15,000 handsets consisting of BlackBerrys, iPhones and Treos.

As my not-so-inconspicuous title suggests, the Treo performed poorly, in fact, surprisingly poorly!  After one year 5.6% of all iPhones malfunctioned, followed by a sizable jump to 12% for the BlackBerry and a massive 16% of Treos.  This is incredibly worrying if you have just a bought a Treo, but comforting if you have selected the iPhone!

So what went wrong?  In all three products the problems most encountered were related to the screen or keypad, which considering that the iPhone is nearly 50% screen is not surprising.  In fact, the problems were pretty widely distributed, so it is difficult to say exactly where the Treo, and to a lesser extent the BlackBerry, are going wrong.  The other top two problems in the Treos were software/features and call quality issues, the latter of which would be quite difficult to rectify.  The BlackBerry and iPhone had the top problems of software/call quality and software/hardware respectively.
So what can we take from this?  If you have been unfortunate enough to have purchased an Treo, treating it with as much caution as possible would be a good idea.  Although, there is no way to solve any possible software/hardware problems, a situation shared by BlackBerry and iPhone users.  However, it gets worse in the two year rates (although the iPhone rates are predictions).

In two years over 1 in 5 (21.6%) of Treos will malfunction, which not only is bad for the customer, but also for the company who are effectively losing 1 phone for every 5 sold in refunds/replacements.  The BlackBerry levels out to around 14.3% while the iPhone is consistently at the bottom of the pile with predictions estimating 11.3% of malfunctions in 2 years, although given the nature of touch screens it is likely that this will continue to rise as the months go by.

Obviously, if you are on a contract you are fine, and you should be able to get a replacement if you are still in warranty, but it is still a massive inconvenience and could still end up with you out of pocket.  Personally, I would go for an iPhone for reliability any day, but longer term figures only time will tell.

Source [CNET]
Data [SquareTrade]