In college when I worked at Batteries Plus, I saw quite a fair share of cell phones in my day. From my experience, LG is a pretty good brand. Never saw any reoccuring problems when customers brought in their phones thinking it was a battery issue. Motorola's can be hit or miss IMO. I've always been a Nokia man myself, but my last phone has be second guessing them. My wife has used Sony Ericcson on her last two phones, but I doubt she'll get another one of them. But she literally just wears the phones out doing about 5000 minutes a month.
My last phone was Nokia 6101 flip phone, last about 16 months. The volume was quite low as compared to other phones. I use my phone maybe 300 minutes a month and one day I noticed a crack near on the plastic cover near the hinge. 6 hours later my phone was in two pieces. So I had luckily saved my old Nokia 3585 candy bar phone and have been using that since. Other than one glitch on the alarm on that phone, it's a tank, going on 5 years IIRC, just replahad to replace the dead battery (after sitting for nearly 2 years).
I've come to learn, especially from customers, that less moving parts the better. Flip phones slamming closed can loosen wires in the speaker and the antena. Think about how many times you open/close your phone. Slider phones are even worse for durability. Average use of a phone, say 1000 minutes a month, will get you about 1.5-2 years on a cellphone battery. Heavy users like my wife, probably a year. If you get 4-5 years, you probably applying for that AARP card
The slimmer and more sleek phones become, the less durable they are. You have to realize that a lot of people are using cellphones as their only source of a phone. Being as mobile as they are and the abuse they take, construction of a phone is very important.
