I dunno, I think both points of view are valid, and it's important to be pragmatic. Stuff fails all the time and it's usually not a big deal. Every holiday season, all the cash registers at Cost Plus stop working, and I stand in line for an hour to buy stocking stuffers. All three AV nerves on my heart failed and I had to get a pacemaker. The first night it skipped 5 beats and the doctors scratched their heads for a while. Turns out it was a loose ring terminal! I have no idea if it has ECC memory, but probably not, because it's a pain to replace the battery...
The probably of most things randomly failing at any particular instant is approximately zero. The probability goes up as you increase the size of the time window, or push things to their limits. You can trust your phone to store an important photo for a few days, as long as you don't run it through a washing machine or something. A few years? You're taking a risk. Many people take that risk, and it works out fine for them. I've had phones fail, hard drives fail, heart nerves fail. I take reasonable precautions to back up stuff I care about. I also have plenty of data that I would be bummed to lose that I haven't backed up yet. I'll get to it one day, or maybe it will get corrupted and I'll be bummed.
The probably of most things randomly failing at any particular instant is approximately zero. The probability goes up as you increase the size of the time window, or push things to their limits. You can trust your phone to store an important photo for a few days, as long as you don't run it through a washing machine or something. A few years? You're taking a risk. Many people take that risk, and it works out fine for them. I've had phones fail, hard drives fail, heart nerves fail. I take reasonable precautions to back up stuff I care about. I also have plenty of data that I would be bummed to lose that I haven't backed up yet. I'll get to it one day, or maybe it will get corrupted and I'll be bummed.