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Samsung accused of making unreliable Android phones

Manny Pham
May 11, 2016

According to The Blancco Group, Android devices suffer more failures than iOS devices, with the Samsung Galaxy S6 topping the list.

The Blancco Technology Group has released a report based on their SmartChk diagnostic platform, which ran 52 types of tests to find issues that would render devices unusable due to crashing. The test was carried out on millions of Android and iOS devices over Q1 of 2016.

Android devices were revealed to have a 44% failure rate, compared to iOS which failed at just 25%. The biggest Android offender was surprisingly the highly rated Samsung Galaxy S6, followed by the S5 and Lenovo K3 Note rounding off the top three.

In the manufacturer category Samsung tops the charts again failing 43% more than rivalling Android manufacturers. Motorola is at two with 14% and Lenovo is at three with 12%. Keep in mind Samsung sold a lot of devices, shipping a colossal 85.6 million units last quarter. With such huge numbers Samsung has topped the list because of quantity, not entirely due to reliability issues. Reliability issues stem from the actual Android OS itself.

Crashing apps is a core issue for Android

Android may be the number one operating system in the world, with nearly 80% of smartphones sold running Google’s OS, but it’s still quite unstable. The Blancco Technology Group stated an example of how fragile Android is:

“Google issued an update to Android System Webview, which is a core component that allows the platform to display web content. While the intention was to improve users’ device performance, it ended up causing apps to crash frequently on Android devices.”

According to the SmartChk diagnostics a staggering 74% of Android apps crashed in Q1 of 2016. Apps that are most likely to crash are ‘tools’ such as antivirus apps. The highest crashing app is Lookout: Security and Antivirus, with an 82% crash rate.

Snapchat is also named at joint 5th with a 0.9% crash rate. Those of you using Snapchat on an Android device are probably not surprised by its inclusion.

What about Apple? 

It’s well known that iOS devices function better with core fundamental features performing at top of the class speeds. Apple devices have the luxury of being in their own ecosystem, with an operating system that is built specifically for them. Although iOS devices are far from perfect in the report.

*We contacted Samsung for comment who said they would provide us with a statement. We’ll update the piece as soon as they get back to us.

For more news, visit What Mobile’s dedicated news page.  

 

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