If you are phone-shopping and wonder about the reliability of various brands, you are in luck. FixYa, a volunteer technical assistance Web site, has analyzed more than 720,000 support requests to come up with complaint-per-phone ratios, which the company said represent reliability.
The study also showed what owners generally liked â€" and did not like â€" about their phones.
The short answer is that iPhones were found to be by far the most reliable, almost three times more reliable than the second-place Samsung phones. Third was Nokia, followed by Motorola.
Apple
That is not to say the iPhones were problem free. Most complaints, 35 percent in fact, concerned the iPhone’s battery life. Apple recently released a system update (6.1.2) to address battery drain, but it’s too soon to know if it has worked. That was followed by complaints over a lack of new features in later models.
What iPhone owners liked was the simplicity €" it was easy to guess how to use the phone’s main features. That was followed by the reliability of features like phone, data and text functions. And finally they liked the vast number of apps in the iTunes store.
Samsung
Samsung owners made 40 percent of their complaints about microphone problems and 20 percent over speaker problems. Owners said the microphone occasionally cut out so the person on the other end could not hear. Less often, the speaker cut out so that the caller could not hear.
Owners of one specific model, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, complained about battery life. Conversely, owners of the Samsung Galaxy S III cited battery life as one of its best features.
Over all, owners liked the sharp screen quality on the Samsung phones, and the Android operating system’s on-screen controls.
Nokia
Nokia owners, in 35 percent of complaints, said the phones responded slowly in comparison to competing phones. The next most c! ommon complaints, at 20 percent, were about a lack of available apps.
What owners liked about their Nokia phones were the durability of the screen, performance of the touch screen, and the Windows “Live Tiles†user interface that uses animated rectangles as controls.
Motorola
In 30 percent of complaints about the Motorola phones, Droids and Razrs included, people wanted help with removing preinstalled apps, sometimes known as “bloatware.†Next most common, in 25 percent of complaints, were problems with the touch screen, such as its refusing to unlock. That was followed, in 20 percent of the complaints, by dissatisfaction with speaker and camera quality.
Owners liked the design of the phones and their battery life. Motorola claimed when the Droid Razr Maxx was released that it had the longest battery life of any phone.
