Blackberries less resiliant than iPhone? Are you sure?

CNET is reporting a SquareTrade story that contends that Blackberry handsets are less resilient than the iPhone.

The study was conducted by SquareTrade and looked at the 15,000 mobile handsets for which they provided warranties. They compared the repair data of Blackberries, iPhones, and Palm Treo devices and found that the iPhone came out on top.

Now, I read this article on a couple of different news sites (Slashdot, etc) and no one seems to point out the obvious flaw in this study: the dataset.

There are only 2 versions of the iPhone (3G and non-3G) and both of these have been produced in the last 2-3 years -- speaking in terms of the technological age (how long components of this type have been produced) of their components (screens, logic boards, etc).

Compare this to RIM's Blackberry which has a much larger collection of different models in stores -- definitely more than 2 -- and most of which have been in production for the last 3 to 4 years, if not longer (again, speaking in terms of technological age of components parts).

It's like comparing apples and oranges. Not only is the Blackberry fail rate going to be higher because of the larger amount of Blacberries in the market in comparison but the fail rate will be higher because the Blackberries are using older components than the relative newcomer in the iPhone. In other words, iPhones haven't been sitting on shelves as long as Blackberries. And as we all know, electronics have limited lifespans not always based on use (solder connections can become loosened over time, for example...).

Also telling is the fact that the study promotes the iPhone as having less failure than the Blackberry on bad data, but then goes on to say that the iPhone is prone to damage via owner accident.

For full disclosure, I currently do not own an iPhone or a Blackberry. However, this study certainly does not convince me that the iPhone is the superior product. Again, I think these two phones are very different and are aimed at very different types of consumers. Ah, bad data that gets circulated like crazy around the internet frustrates me greatly!