No brand of phone is bad.
I have used many brands from Ericsson, panasonic, nokia, trium, motorola, siemens, Imate/O2, sonyericsson, lg, samsung etc
My take is this. There is no much of a difference between any brand. Except if the company has just taken a plunge into the mobile phone business( for ege LG's quality 3 years ago)
I dont go for a brandname but something in a phone that is exclusive and different is my choice. ( N-gage, p910i, siemens sx1, e680i etc)
people scared the Sh*t outta me in India saying siemens is bad. That made me go want the sx1 even more. I didnt regret my decision.
I have had a lg slider breakdown, A motorola E365 shut down by water, A nokia 3530 go crazy and a buggy samsung c100. I dont find any kind of relation with the breakdown related to the brand.