Edible Apple

SquareTrade is an independent US provider of warranties who recently compiled data from over 50,000 incidents of smartphone failure reports. As laid out in the chart below, the iPhone 4 has the lowest percentage of reported non-accident related malfunctions, coming in at just 2.1%. The iPhone 3GS lags slightly behind comprising 2.3% of reported malfunctions.

That notwithstanding, you might want to keep an especially close eye on your iPhone 4 as it seems particularly prone to damage from drops. Do keep in mind, though, that the iPhone 4 figures are merely projections as the device has only been out on the market for approximately 6 months thus far. In any case, is the extremely high droppage rate for the iPhone 4 an indication that it was poorly designed, or perhaps, a sign that there are a boatload of iPhone 4’s in circulation and people tend to use their iPhone’s for longer periods of time compared to other smartphones?

“Once both malfunctions and accidents are taken into account,” the report explains, “the playing field levels out a bit. The iPhone 3GS is the least likely to experience failure, with BlackBerry not far behind. Motorola phones, HTC phones, and the iPhone 4 failed slightly more often, but none are projected to exceed a 16% failure rate.”