T-mobile MDA's average lifespan is 18 days

T-mobile MDA average lifespan is 18 days

{ October 10, 2006 @ 1:58 pm } · { Mac, Gizmos & Gadgets, nyc } · { Comments }

OK this has gotten a little ridiculous. I am currently writing this post from my 10th T-mobile MDA device in 6 months. None of them were lost or stolen. None of them were water damaged. None had severe physical trauma or had cracked screens.

They just stop working.

So 10 phones in 6 months…. That works out to an average 18 days of life for each device. Two and a half weeks usage from a $400 phone isn’t just bad, it’s utterly pathetic. On the plus side I have not had to pay for a single one of the replacements. T-mobile must know just how poorly these phones are built or they wouldn’t offer up replacements so easily.

That brings up the question of why a company would even offer such an error prone piece of hardware to its customers. Surely they cannot be making money off me as a customer when I’ve gone through 10 of their flagship smartphones in half a years time. That’s $4,000 USD (retail) of hardware; far more than the sum of my $80/month service plan revenue. The next generation of the MDA is already available in Europe and elsewhere as the MDA Vario II (otherwise known as the HTC TyTn) and addresses many of the MDA’s shortcomings. Why is T-mobile USA so slow to upgrade such a shoddy product? Perhaps they have a boatload of now-outdated MDA’s from the rest of the world that they must now hawk to the bottom-feeding American market.

Anyone else out there with MDA horror stories? How many phones have you been through?