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Australia’s most reliable smartphone brands
The smartphone brands that hold up best over time, as chosen by CHOICE members.
Last updated: 23 Jul 2020
About the scores
Reliability
Reliability figures are based on owner assessment, not test data. We use the data we collect from members to rate the most popular brands for reliability. We take into account the age of the products so we can compare fairly between brands.
Owner satisfaction
We asked owners to tell us what they thought of the products they own, rating them from ‘Excellent’ to ‘Terrible’. We’ve used this information to give each brand an owner satisfaction rating so you can see what people who use the brand day in, day out, think of them.
The annual CHOICE reliability survey asks thousands of members about the smartphones they own, what they think of them and how they’ve held up over time.
More than 6000 members participated in our 2020 reliability survey across a range of products, and of that, 4298 people told us about their smartphone. The information they provided gives us a really good indication of how each brand stacks up over time.
Brand reliability results are for CHOICE members only.
Our guide to buying the best smartphone is free and has lots of great information and advice.
Our brand reliability scores helps guide you when choosing a product – with the knowledge that the brand is well regarded by CHOICE members for customer satisfaction and reliability.
How we get the data
We calculate a brand’s reliability score and owner rating based on our survey of 6009 CHOICE members, conducted in April and May 2020. Of those 6009 members, 4298 people told us about their smartphone.
The top performers
Most reliable smartphone brands: Huawei, Samsung, Oppo, Motorola
Highest owner satisfaction: Apple
Main problems: Battery draining quickly/degraded battery life, cracked screen/broken screen, poor/faulty cellular reception (3G/4G/5G)
This year, 4298 people told us about their smartphone:
- Over half (57%) of the respondents had an Apple smartphone
- 27% had a Samsung
- The rest of the brands had very little market share.
For reliability and satisfaction, we looked at a five-year purchase period, 2015–19. Huawei, Samsung, Oppo and Motorola all achieved reliability scores of over 80% – significantly higher than Apple and Google. Owner satisfaction, however, was highest for Apple. Service satisfaction was also higher for Apple than Samsung.
Of those who bought their smartphones in the last five years:
- 39% have experienced problems with their device
- 16% complained about degraded battery life or that it drains quickly
- 7% had cracked/broken screens
- 6% said the cellular reception is poor/faulty
- 17% had contacted the brand for service support and nearly half (46%) of them did so due to a minor failure
- Apple owners (19%) are more likely to complain about degraded battery life than Motorola (4%), Oppo (3%) and Samsung (12%) owners.
Apple owners are also the most likely to say they’d buy another Apple smartphone again, mostly because they had good experience, familiarity and compatibility with other Apple products they own. As reflected in the high user satisfaction and service satisfaction scores, Apple owners say it’s a high quality product, easy to use and reliable, and provides excellent service.
Many Samsung owners were happy with their smartphone, but there were also a lot of mentions of problems, such as battery and motherboard.
Huawei got a lot of compliments on good battery life, but many were concerned that Google no longer supports the brand.
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