I've owned several android tablets (acer, lenovo and samsung) all have failed much more quickly than I'd like. Meanwhile my iPhones have lasted years without problem, in fact my mother in law currently uses my old iPhone 8 after a battery replacement.

We are about to implement a warehouse picking system at work this will need maybe 6 tablets, obviously iPads are expensive but are they going to provide the same reliability and longevity as an iPhone, or should I just accept that tablets just die more frequently than phones?

** tablet failures have included being borked and unrecoverable after Android updates on 2 x Lenovo tablets, random rebooting on Samsung Galaxy S6 (even after many resets/updates), and dead batteries

I have a number of friends with ancient ipads that are working fine.

Thanks, never really viewed tablets as mission critical as I normally use them for just casual browsing at home, I think iPads will probably be worth it in the long run.

I've got a couple of Samsung tablets here: a Galaxy Tab A7 and a Tab S2. They're both still working fine.

But: they don't get a lot of use, which means I can't speak to their robustness. The most important thing, however, is that Android tablets tend to be abandonware -- they stop being upgradable to the latest Android version far too quickly, in my opinion.

I don't think that's such a problem with iPads.

Do you have preference for physical size, screen size or brightness or other physical attributes?

iPad cases are available in a wide variety of materials and features including cases with drop protection (especially corner padding). Handles and grip strap features I expect are also possible.

I will mention that iPad camera image quality trails behind iPhone cameras, so some model iPads have notably less bad cameras than other models.

Apple did/does promote iPads for bulk educational deployment. I think there are several sources of charging racks, software apps for device deployment, tracking, device update management, etc.

We use two iPad Pro daily and have found that around year three the charge port (USB-C) will become worn enough to sometimes charge slowly or intermittently. The tiny contacts inside the charge port seem to be the wear factor. Each of our iPads may be unplugged and re-plugged multiple times each day.

The deprecated Lightning charge ports on older iPad models seemed to last at least as long as USB-C, perhaps longer. The cable Lightning ends would develop problems so we just replaced the cables whenever one become suspect.

Good point about the charging ports wearing out on tablets which are used for warehouse floor applications. If you go with iPads, which don't have wireless charging, I believe you could get wireless charging *cases* and feed two birds with one scone, since you'd want cases anyway.