One in Seven Mobile Phones Faulty

August 10, 2005

A wide-ranging survey by UK consumer publication Which? magazine shows that one in seven mobile handsets proves faulty within the first year. The report also pointed out that the majority of problems occurred in the first six months after purchase.

The survey, which was based on 5,085 consumer interviews, of whom 2,339 had bought a phone in the past twelve months, showed a failure rate that the editor of Which? magazine described as "Way too high." By way of comparison, the magazine said that a similar survey on digital cameras had recently found that only 4% had any fault in the first year of service.

The survey found that phones hooked up to the 3 network were most likely to go wrong. In fact, 30% of those reporting a fault in the Which? interviews said that their phones came from 3. This was nearly double the amount that reported faults from each of the other operators, such as BT Mobile, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Mobiles from MVNOs such as Tesco and Virgin were more reliable, but this may have been because they tended to be older models.

The manufacturers most often cited as supplying "faulty" phones were Motorola and Sony Ericsson. In contrast Nokia and Samsung had the least reported faults.