Yeah, devices dying that fast isn't the norm. That said, Apple will take better care of you inside or outside warranty. To be fair, that has been Apple's schtick for a long time, google is just getting into this business model.

I've had a good experience only once with Apple once out of three times I've taken items in, when they replaced the logic board on my MBP a week after the program to replace for that model ended. They still refuse to honor well known fraying problems with their MagSafe adapters. The other time involved a 2010 MBP battery replacement that should have taken 15 minutes to half an hour, maybe an hour (I was told as much). It ended up taking four hours and they never contacted me when it was ready. If Apple was willing to sell parts to their customers, I would have had it done in 10 minutes.

Honestly, I've had about the same experience with Google (specifically Project Fi) with a different set of issues. I can't really say that one company is better than the other, and I doubt it would be easy to find reliable data to make a case for one or the other.

Why would you do data churning on a phone over a PC or laptop? Not being rude, I'm curious.

I work on video products which entails an enormous amount of very high bitrate mobile video. Maybe it's a unwarranted fear, but I always feel like I'm killing the onboard flash so using a disposable SD card is always just comforting.