The report, conducted by warranty seller , made its way this week and has been steadily building buzz ever since. It claims that is "prone to accidental damage," seemingly implying (though never directly asserting) that the iPhone may be more likely to break than its smartphone competitors.

Don't fall for the attention-grabbing headline, though: There's far more to this "research" than meets the eye.

When iPhones Fail

The starts, soundly enough, by comparing the iPhone 3G to the and the . The company claims that, over a 22-month period, the iPhones it tracked experienced far fewer hardware failures than the other mobile devices. Only 9.9 percent of iPhones malfunctioned during that initial two-year timeframe, SquareTrade says, while 15.3 percent of BlackBerrys and nearly 20 percent of Palm Treos had hardware issues.

That sets the stage for the remainder of the sales pitch -- er, sorry...study. Brace yourself.