Apple has been selling iPods since 2001, so there is a large amount of information on how iPods fail. Battery issues have been widespread, but there seems to have been improvement of battery performance with successive generations.

A survey was done in 2005 with 4000 iPod owners, accounting for almost 9,000 iPods. 7500 of these iPods were problem-free, while about 1500 failed. The data did identify trends among the various iPod models.

The model identified that failed significantly more than average was the iPod 40 GB Click Wheel (4^th gen).  The other models that had high failure rates were the scroll wheel models (5 and 10 GB) and the iPod 3^rd Generation (30 GB dock connector).

The iPod models that failed significantly less than average were the Nanos (2 GB, 4 GB), the Mini 6 GB (which was sold starting February 05, also known as Mini 2^nd Gen) and the iPod Color 20 GB.  The Shuffle is also in this category.  The 30GB iPod Video (and 60GB) were also included in the survey, but they had not been out very long when the original survey was taken.

What are the common iPod failures?

Most iPod failures are related to the battery, the hard drive, and to main-board failures.  The iPod Nano has good reliability, at least partially because it uses Flash Memory for storage, rather than a hard drive.  The down side to the Nano, is that the battery is soldered onto the main board, making its replacement difficult.  It basically has to be done professionally so it is therefore expensive.  The other “Classic” and Mini iPods have batteries which have a connector interface to the main board, which makes replacement fairly easy (can be done by a regular person without electronics or micro-soldering skills).  Their down side is that they have the hard drive which is prone to failure.  iPod hard drives are vulnerable to damage as a result of being dropped or getting wet.

The failures which occur less often are display and headphone problems.  Occasionally, a software update will “brick” an iPod, making it effectively dead.

Video iPods appear to be fairly reliable, improving on the reliability of their predecessors.  Their batteries are easy to replace.  From taking apart many broken iPod video models, the most common problem is hard drive failure, followed closely by problems with the main board.

Early iPods models commonly suffered from damaged FireWire ports. This failure mechanism diminished with the introduction of the iPod with Dock connector. The dock port appears to have increased durability of iPods.

The advent of the iTouch expands the lineup.  The iTouch has less memory available than the Video Classic, because the storage is with Flash memory rather than a hard drive.  This was a very strategic move by Apple, one that makes a lot of sense.  As flash memory prices continue to decline, it is quite possible that eventually all iPod models will use Flash for storage, due to it’s significant robustness over hard drive storage.

There are ways to convert a 30GB iPod video to use Flash memory.  This will provide a piece of gear that will be resilient to rough handling, as well as resulting in lower battery consumption.