Posted on 10/12/2010 5:46:59 PM PDT by PugetSoundSoldier
Synopsis: SquareTrade analyzed iPhone accidents for over 20,000 iPhone 4s covered by SquareTrade Care Plans and found a 82% increase in reported broken screens compared to the iPhone 3gs.
Highlights of the study include:
* iPhone 4 owners reported 82% more damaged screens in the first 4 months compared to iPhone 3gs owners.
* Overall, the reported accident rate for iPhone 4s was 68% higher than for the iPhone 3gs.
* An estimated 15.5% of iPhone 4 owners will have an accident within a year of buying their phone.
(Excerpt) Read more at squaretrade.com ...
Its PSS thread, and he has asked you to clean it up several times.
You accused me of “infiltrating “ your email. A private message is not infiltrating.
First of all “infiltrating” email is not a “federal crime” as you so state.
You sent me a private reply which comes to my Freep Mail telling me you hoped I “choked” IIRC. Why would you not post that publicly? I think because you know it was totally inappropriate. I then asked you to stop and you continued to be vile in the extreme. You sent me two more mails ... each time I asked you to stop.
You DID infiltrate my mail.
No one has been able to explain how this is not a Mac thread. It clearly says “iPhone” and is ONLY about an Apple product.
Hi Puget.
I'm not going to enter into this technical discussion, interesting though it is. Overall, I suspect your technical assessment may be on or close to the mark. No argument there.
This is a comment about the thread itself, and your purpose in posting certain of your comments. Just for the record, Puget, because you know perfectly well this is true:
Your taunts like the above are called "BAIT".Are you proud of yourself? (That's a rhetorical question, no need to answer.)They have no place on a civil thread intended to discuss the facts of the news.
It's obviously and completely an Apple thread.
You set your bait out and some Apple folks took it.
Comments like yours above poison the FR tech threads, and are unnecessary, IMO. Under other circumstances, they might be seen as a form of self-deprecating humor, but in these circumstances, it's bait. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
I suggest that you set a better example and encourage other posters (such as driftdiver and bunnyslippers) to stop fighting and talk about the technical pros and cons, like the first few comments, and your comment #32, which is fascinating. There's plenty to talk about there, without getting into your personal obsession with old attacks to or from Apple fans. You can set the tone with a clear, adult example, instead of a juvenile one.
Unfortunately, the thread has already deteriorated to the point where it'll turn my stomach to participate much, and I've gotta get work done today anyway, so I'm off until this evening.
Please, all, stop the food-fight, and try to pull the thread back into a more appropriate discussion relating to the topic.
Thanks.
Tell that to BunnySlippers who charged in like a bull and attacked. Read the opening post, and up to 17 - linked from the story, title straight from the other website, and we were talking WHY it has higher breakage rates.
Then Bunny crashed it, and the crap happened yet again because iPhone fans simply cannot take the truth.
Get some balance, please. You can play peacemaker, but read this thread objectively and you'll see when it went sideways - Bunny charging in and attacking for some grievance from the past. Calling me out and ignoring the reality shows your "peacemaking" is about as one-sided as the UN Security Council.
So, that said, if you have nothing technical to add, why are you here? Yeah, I'm being snippy, but I'm tired of always being attacked and treated as the bad guy (like you're doing here) for reporting OBJECTIVE data, and discussing technical reasons for why it came about. You don't like it? You're free to move to another thread...
Got a problem with it, let's take it to private mail.
Please shut the hell up and knock it off with stirring the crap...
Knock it off drama queen...
iPhone != Mac. Not everything that involves Apple is a Mac thread. There’s another version of this story linked to in 11, you can go over there for the worship.
So you own Apple now and are the only one to post threads about apple?? Really? Are you sure?
So do you also get paid by apple to do PR for them?
dayglored,
To be fair puget posted the article and then the hate joined in.
I can see not commenting on a thread where the poster asks you not too. PSS posted this thread. He invited me to comment.
Since then the haters have attacked, insulted and lied. I’d appreciate if they got equal time in your condemnation.
Okay, sorry about that, Chief.
As I said in my original comment (#43), I thought Puget posted a good thread, and it started with a couple good comments. IMO, it started getting off-kilter and sarcastic soon after, though. I was disappointed to see it degenerate so quickly into a pissing match and he-said-she-said type arguing.
> I can see not commenting on a thread where the poster asks you not too. PSS posted this thread. He invited me to comment.
All true, and clearly that you and BunnySlippers had very different perspectives on it. That said, I will respectfully decline to join the pissing match. :)
> Since then the haters have attacked, insulted and lied. Id appreciate if they got equal time in your condemnation
Okay, fair enough. I'm going to write to BunnySlippers privately, and on second thought I should have made my comment to Puget private also. Oh, well, another barge goes under the dam.
FWIW, I see it as our shared responsibility to keep the threads relatively free of rancor, and to help each other avoid breaching the cease-fire. I thought of Puget as an ally in that, so I was a bit annoyed at his taunts, and called him on it (which earned me a warning from the Admin Mod). I did consider wading into the pissing match you and BunnySlippers had going, and thought better of it -- it's Puget's thread, not mine -- but that omission did make my comments appear one-sided, as you say.
I've been called a lot of things, but getting called a "drama queen" by the Admin Mod is a first for me. I think I'll try to avoid a repetition of that particular honor.
First off, let me say I now wish I had made my earlier comment to you privately. That wasn't an appropriate comment for the open thread.
> So, that said, if you have nothing technical to add, why are you here?
Actually, I had intended to add later comments on the technical issue; and you recall I agreed with your technical assessment and said so. But the tone of the thread threw me off, and after that first comment I had to drive to work, so now I'm back...
> Yeah, I'm being snippy, but I'm tired of always being attacked and treated as the bad guy (like you're doing here) for reporting OBJECTIVE data, and discussing technical reasons for why it came about. You don't like it? You're free to move to another thread...
Of course I am, thanks.
Note, however, that I did NOT take issue with you "reporting OBJECTIVE data, and discussing technical reasons for why it came about", whatsoever.
I chided you for -- as I saw it, remember -- setting a trap, gathering the resident anti-Apple folks for what promised to become a bash-fest, and waiting for pro-Apple folks to fall into it. You are free to do that, as I don't think there are any site rules about setting traps or any number of other things. I just thought it was unfortunate and unworthy of you. That's my opinion, you don't have to worry about it.
BTW, I think BunnySlippers was unwise to take the bait and give driftdiver a hard time for posting on an Apple thread. I'm not going to join their pissing match, but it pained me to see that happen. Oh, well.
> Got a problem with it, let's take it to private mail.
On reflection, I should have made my initial comment to you privately, and I now regret that I did not. Sorry about that, learned that lesson I think.
Meanwhile, having thought about the thread topic today, I stand by my comment over here:
Having glass on two sides rather than one presents twice as much chance of something breaking:I will be very interested to see what Apple does in the next release of the iPhone. I expect some changes with regard to the antenna and the glass.3GS = 2.1% cracked the front glass
4 = 3.9% cracked either the front glass or the rear glass
So to me, that sounds about right. Twice as much opportunity for something to break, and twice as many breaks.
I fail to see the big deal in these stats.
That's of course a different question from the technical issue of whether having glass on both sides was a good idea.
Personally, I'm quite sure it's NOT Gorilla Glass on the phone; Corning's never said so, and Apple has never stated so (Jobs simply said that Apple developed some new glass for the use). Gorilla Glass can take a huge amount of abuse. And the iPhone 4 cannot take what's being shown there.
It's a combination of a stronger glass that Apple bought somewhere - a glass that is more brittle, however - and the all-metal sides and less shock-mounting used. A downgrade all-around, and actual real-world results are proving it out.
Over a 2 year span, extrapolating these numbers, and we'd see a 30% screen break rate for the iPhone 4 - that's a HUGE failure rate over 2 years. Clearly there's a problem, and Apple better get on it to fix it (along with the antenna, and proximity sensor, and...)
Let's see... the article states, for the iPhone4:
"...at least a quarter of the broken glass claims involved the back screen..."So consider this. 3.9% overall breakage rate for the iPhone4, of which "at least a quarter" (say 1%) were the back side. So roughly speaking, starting with the 2.1% rate from the iPhone3GS, add that 1% due to the back side, and you have 3.1%. But the iPhone4 rate is 3.9%, a difference of 0.8%.
So I would say, the additional rate of breakage -- after compensating for the back side -- which can be said to be due to increased fragility, is more like 0.8%. And that percentage, compared to the 2.1%, is an increase of 38%, less than half of the 82% increase trumpeted in the article.
I think that even 38% is significant enough to warrant a close look at how and why it's happening and correct it. There's no need to inflate the figures by combining apples and oranges, front and back, in an assessment of the material strength.
Of course, the 82% figure still stands for the overall device breakage rate, no argument.
> Personally, I'm quite sure it's NOT Gorilla Glass on the phone; Corning's never said so, and Apple has never stated so (Jobs simply said that Apple developed some new glass for the use).
Yeah, but that's neither here nor there -- Apple very rarely discloses anything about their vendors, and vendor contracts with Apple require complete secrecy. Surely you don't expect Corning to say something that would breach their contract with Apple.
> Gorilla Glass can take a huge amount of abuse. And the iPhone 4 cannot take what's being shown there.
Has someone done a similar calibrated side-by-side comparison of those tests, using real Corning Gorilla Glass, and a piece of glass screen from an iPhone4? (Same thickness, shape, etc. of course.)
> It's a combination of a stronger glass that Apple bought somewhere - a glass that is more brittle, however - and the all-metal sides and less shock-mounting used. A downgrade all-around, and actual real-world results are proving it out.
I readily agree that the glass/metal arrangement on the iPhone4 sorta worried me initially, and continues to do so. My cheap stupidphone takes a lot of abuse daily, and while my iPod also seems to take similar abuse well, it's got a metal back.
> Over a 2 year span, extrapolating these numbers, and we'd see a 30% screen break rate for the iPhone 4 - that's a HUGE failure rate over 2 years. Clearly there's a problem, and Apple better get on it to fix it (along with the antenna, and proximity sensor, and...)
One thing you have to credit Apple for, is that they have a pretty good track record of correcting their design errors. Sometimes it only changes the product a little; sometimes it makes the product morph or even disappear.
The pro-Apple people who breathlessly make prognostications about possible future Apple products, are only slightly less annoying than the anti-Apple people who breathlessly declare that Apple is failing left and right before they've even come out with a response. Both groups sound like they're on the brink of climax; I think they spend too much time with one hand on their keyboard and the other hand on their... mouse.
I prefer to wait for the iPhone5, or at least the iPhone4.1, before I make a judgment of how Apple responded to these issues.
2.1% to 2.9% is a 40% increase in breakage.
Whoops, I see there was more to your post. Nevermind.
No problem.
The calculations are necessarily somewhat loose, and dividing figures of two significant digits does not give fine-grained results. :) We'd have to have the raw data from those thousands of phones, to really do it right.
My point in the bit of arithmetic was only that the original article was hyperventilating about the 82% front-plus-back figure and implying that it was -all- due to materials and mechanical design, and ignoring the back as a new breakable item.
It's still the case that Apple should be looking at the mechanical arrangement of things in that phone. I have a bet that the iPhone5 is significantly different.
And a 40% increase in breakage is still quite large... Either it’s a more brittle glass, a worse mounting scheme, or a combination of both. But it’s much to large an increase to just be random noise, especially over 4 months.
The glass and/or design simply isn’t as strong as previous versions. It’s a step backwards. The screen breaks more often, and the back can now shatter (something never an issue in previous models).
Interesting this is proclaimed as FUD by the pro-Apple camp, however...
It could be gorilla glass built to chinese specs. Quality control is a problem for many companies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.