Subway tiles only hold up as well as the quality of the tile ( denser tile doesn't chip and crack) and the installation and the backing.
I know a house that has subway tile in the shower and walls and it was good for easily 60 years...until the new owners decided to "up date" and replaced it with modern junk....laminate to be precise!!

We just did ours. Why would the shape of the tile matter for their wear ability? They will hold up the same as any ceramic tile. Ceramic tile has been used in shower surrounds for decades. We considered colored grout too but white on white covers a world of sins. We did the shower and a wains cotting around the entire bathroom. They did not take all that long to install. Once you have your pattern, backer board in, reinforcement for future hand bars and niches laid out it goes quite fast. We are loving ours!!

We have subway from lowes with white grout in our shower.They are holding up well and are easy to clean. We painted the cement board with Red guard before tiling for extra leakage security.

I had so many extra tiles I decided to use them in the kitchen but instead of white we used a gray grout so we could keep the shadow.Here are pics, can you see the difference? If not, I can take a better pic when i get home. In order to keep the shadow without too much pattern I thought a grout called silver shadow would be best but we ended up using delorean gray and keeping the line thin. Love it!

Although I prefer the look of the gray it would not have made a difference in keeping the wall clean. The floor is a different story, that white grout is now gray:(

Agreed w/ th equality thing. My tiles are over 100yrs old and th eonly place that there is damage is where people drilled into them to hang stuff before we moved in. Guess they just couldn't move their towel bars up all of 6" to ABOVE the subway tile bullnose!

BTW - Great place Changingitup!