Oct 13, 2010 10:43 GMT  ·  By

SquareTrade, an independent warranty provider, has analyzed iPhone accidents for over 20,000 iPhone 4 units covered by its Care Plans and found an 82% increase in reported broken screens compared to the iPhone 3GS, the company announced.

Over at its web site, SquareTrade begins with the highlights of the study, which include:

- iPhone 4 owners reported 82% more damaged screens in the first 4 months compared to iPhone 3gs owners. - Overall, the reported accident rate for iPhone 4s was 68% higher than for the iPhone 3gs. - An estimated 15.5% of iPhone 4 owners will have an accident within a year of buying their phone.

The warranty vendor then elaborates, explaining that it has examined the accident claim rate reported by their customers to come up with some solid data.

It looked at the accident claim rate for the aforementioned 20,000 SquareTrade iPhone 4 warranty owners and compared this to the iPhone 3GS claim rate to find some rather intriguing results.

The data shows that iPhone 4 owners are reporting accidents 68% more frequently than iPhone 3GS owners.

While approximately 4.7% of iPhone 4 owners reported an accident to SquareTrade in the first four months of ownership, only 2.8% of iPhone 3GS owners had an accident over the same time period. That’s almost 70% higher than iPhone 3GS owners.

Not surprisingly, iPhone 4 accidents mostly involved a damaged screen.

They found the iPhone 4 had 82% more broken screens than the iPhone 3GS reported in the first 4 months.

“Interpreting the results more broadly, the iPhone 4 appears to be significantly more likely to break than previous versions, as we speculated back in our June iPhone report,” says SquareTrade.

“Not only has the scratchable surface area doubled, the new aluminosilicate Gorilla glass used in the iPhone 4 doesn’t seem any less likely to break than previous models,” the company notes.

“While our data doesn't identify which broken screens resulted from dirt trapped behind a slide case, at least a quarter of the broken glass claims involved the back screen,” adds SquareTrade.

“With 82% more cracked screens reported, the evidence suggests that the iPhone 4 is more vulnerable to physical damage than its predecessor,” reads the conclusion of the SquareTrade analysis.