People love their mobiles but hate crappy battery life, poor customer service, and endless faults

Stop the presses! People don’t like it when things are rubbish! A new study shows that while we are more attached to our phones than ever, they are an increasing source of frustration and problems. Users have become less tolerant of issues with hardware, bad experiences with customer services, and crashing apps.

The study -- entitled It's Complicated: Mobile Frustrations & Churn -- also found that faulty handsets and poor customer services would be enough to drive nearly a third of people to a new carrier or handset manufacturer. Interestingly, the study also threw up a few surprises, including the revelation that not many mobile users are bothered about photo and video quality.

In fact, just 2 percent of those surveyed in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia indicated that they were most frustrated by the quality of their phone or tablet's camera. Even more surprisingly, just 8 percent of respondents said that low storage problems were their primary concern, reveals the report by Blancco Technology Group.

Handset turnover was found to be faster than ever. 17 percent of people said they buy a new phone every year, or whenever a new flagship is launched. More than a third (35 percent) hang on to their phones for just two to three years. 31 percent of people said they experienced problems with their phone at least once a month, with 38 percent complaining that battery life in their greatest concern.

Handset owners do not like to wait for problems to be looked at. 9 percent of respondents said they would seek help within three hours of running into problems, while 49 percent would wait no more than three days -- many are disappointed, as 38 percent say they have had poor experiences with customer services. The most common course of action when encountering a problem is to attempt to self-diagnose and fix -- there are fears of expensive repairs bills from handset manufacturers or carriers.

The report doesn’t go as far as revealing which carriers or handsets are the most problematic, but it makes for interesting reading nonetheless.

Photo credit: Oleksandr Berezko / Shutterstock