Tin whiskers are a problem which was blown way out of proportion -- I remember back in 2006 when people were panicking about RoHS. It's over a decade later, and where's all the bricked cellphones?
Ah, well...
Figures that cellphones, and pretty much every other consumer electronic device, is bricked almost exclusively due to shitty software, doesn't it? Or electrolytics, or batteries.
It's my understanding (but I haven't read about it in quite a while, mind) that lead-free is actually more reliable, when done correctly. And it's worse, for this reason and others, when done poorly. It's more of a quality differentiator among assemblers and their suppliers. With a well tuned process, and precisely formulated alloys and fluxes, it's better; if any one of these is poor, the end product is poor.
If you expected to be able to hang on to that $50 television from five years ago, well... y'know?
Tim