Lots of People Suing Apple for iPhone 4 Reception

[stevenr4472]

I do not have an iphone, never will. I was warned touching the antenna will harm my health. Isn't holding the iphone doing just that?

 

[LSoares1]

Am I the only one thinking that Apple actually set their iphones to report more bars than they actually had to hide the fact that AT&T's crappy service almost never provides good signal strength!

 

[Guest]

from what i understand apple is letting people return the phones no questions asked without any charge so why not just do so.so many people looking for something for nothing great world we live in

 

[Guest]

I do not consider myself to be an Apple Fanboy, as many seem to call people who like Apple, but I will tell you this. I will give you my unbiased thoughts as someone who runs both PCs and Macs, which I love both, and I will never permanently choose one over the other. Windows 7 rocks!

I do own an new iPhone 4, and at this point in time, I have been dropped from one call. Unfortunately, phone signals so not like to travel through large hills that surround narrow roads. I have tried to force dropped calls by holding the phone in the ways that people are complaining about, and I stay connected to the call. I do see a fluctuation of two or three bars, but I do stay connected with good call quality. I did purchase a Apple's overpriced bumper and repeat the same tests. With the bumper on, I do not lose any bars. I agree with many other people when they say they should not have to buy a case to help signal. I look at it as lagniappe. I have to say though, Apple's bumper is not like the cheap rubber bands that you find at all the kiosks in the mall. It was definitely over-priced, but I am glad I went with it. Apple's bumper is a mix of rubber and hard plastic with metal covers for the buttons. One thing that everyone can agree on with Apple is that there products do look great. They did put quality into their bumper, so I was pleased with the results.

Anyway, I am receiving better call quality with the iPhone 4 than I was with my older iPhone 3G. Am I just lucky? If I am, then great. I do not regret getting the iPhone, and I have to say that it is by far the fastest and most feature-rich phone I have ever used. I am not one to knock something before I try it, so I like to sit back and read what other people are saying, but allow myself to draw my own conclusions. As I have mentioned. I am happy with my iPhone. If you are not getting the results you anticipated with your iPhone, just return it and choose something different. How did this turn into a lawsuit in less than a month? Why did something like this turn into a lawsuit? From the sounds of it, many of the people commenting here do not own iPhones, so it is hard for me to take your comments into consideration when making my purchase decisions. I have to say, I am glad I did not listen to many of the comments found on here. I love my iPhone so far.

I hope this helps.

 

[apocalypseap]

"Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength."

LOL, "mistakenly." More like, "let's make it look like we have a better quality reception on our phones. Oops, our engineers royally screwed up, so let's send out an announcement to keep them busy by pretending our marketing ploy to make it look like we have better signal quality is actually a mistake."

 

[skevil]

So in others word, this "software fix" isn't really a fix at all--it's just going to show people have two bars now where before it said they had five bars and when they cut the reception by holding the phone a certain way Apple can just claim they're in a low service area. Way to solve a problem Apple.

 

[CChick]

Some-time-the-future ..

*iPhone 4gS launch presentation*

"Hello there, here I'll show you the iPhone 4gS, the greatest, easiest, revolutionary phone, we made over 200 improvements over the iPhone 4, First one is we made the Antenna external ... *iZealots starts cheeeeeerrrrrinnnggg and like YEAH JOBS OH MY GOD YOU ARE GOD ! AHHHH KISS MY FOREHEAD PLEASE !!!!! ... "

 

[CChick]

oh forgot to say one thing, the reason why those 1.699999 million people didn't say anything ---- simply because they're losers. They will buy anything outa Steve Jobs butt, rub it all over their face while cherring "JOBS OMG U ARE THE MAN"

just look at that pathetic loser in Texas, instead of trying to get help and find a job, he just camp in front of the Apple store a week ahead of iPhone launch date. Talked about fail ?

 

[p4nz3rm4d]

... y dont we blow Jobs up? That will solve the problem and get rid of those cockey apple users...

 

[Guest]

For all those who are posting their "stop buying apple products" feelings on Tom's Hardware, I agree, but what kind of apple user would actually read these articles? You think these are the people that go to tech sites? Start posting somewhere where they might see it, like twitter :shudder:. Or, really, any web site that stupid people use.

I passed an apple store today in D.C. and heavily considered campaigning outside of it. Regardless of how hypocritical the lawsuit is, I hope it goes somewhere. Someone needs to show Apple that they suck. Besides Google. 'Cause clearly Apple doesn't believe Google.

 

[Vermil]

[citation][nom]Sythix[/nom]And we watch our beloved free market economy burn. The principles of capitalism include that when a business produces faulty products people will stop buying their products and force them to make quality ones. Granting lawsuits goes heavily against this principle. You bought an iphone knowing that most things at launch are buggy and knowing that apple doesn't care about customers. Now you're complaining about your reception and threatening to sue, instead of suing, don't buy apple products. Otherwise you're a hypocrite.[/citation]
First, I would say we don't really have a truly free market. And that is primarily the fault of the legal system. We have anti-thrust laws, but they are constantly walked all over, without serious consequences (Intel). But another reason is that some players have an enormous power to actually 'shape' the market, into directions where their gain will be maximized. Regardless if this is actually in the interest of the clueless consumer (usually not)(Google).
As for the "faulty" product, you will be extremely hard pressed to find a phone with better reception than the iPhone4. That's the real lowdown of it.

 

[fulle]

Lets see, they had software showing a misleading amount of bars to hide the low signal strength under AT&T's network, but when the "Deathgrip" stuff started to hit hard, they tried to say that it wasn't a hardware problem, but that the bars were just misleading.

I hope Apple gets slapped good by the lawyers. The way they've handled the whole thing has been pretty pathetic.

Ideally, they wouldn't have been misleading with the software to begin with, and when they discovered the hardware problem, they should have recalled the phones, to send them back to have a layer of cheap shielding added to protect the antenna from touch interference. Users who already got a hold of the defective device should have been offered a free bumper case to hold them over until Apple has stock to REPLACE the phone for them at no cost.

Instead: "What problem? You're holding your phone wrong."

 

[fulle]

Doing my best to do what I can....

From a conversation I just had at the bar tonight:

Acquaintance: Yeah man, it sucks, I'm almost out of storage space on my iPhone.
Me: That's not a big deal, I have a 16GB Class4 Micro SDHD card you can have.
Acquaintance: Really?!
Me: Oh wait, sorry... Apple product. Nevermind... no expandable memory.
Acquaintance: You got my hopes up on purpose... *******.
Me: Pretty much. Stop using Apple proprietary ****.

 

[surfer1337dude]

[citation][nom]jakemo136[/nom]Sooo.... the part I don't understand is this: If a product has that many issues right out of the box, wouldn't any normal person simply RETURN IT!? Rather than filing a class action lawsuit? It seems to me that if all these people that were having issues with their phones simply returned them, costing Apple profits, that would get the message across a lot clearer than simply sitting and whining, while Apple laughs all the way to the bank....[/citation]
Well think about it, if you return a product that is flawed then you would need to return every one you get no matter what. This comes down to 2 things: firstly that you are just wasting a ton of your own time, and secondly that some companies will only let you return something so many times. As far as costing Apply profits, if the lawsuits are successful then Apply would loose that much money and/or have to issue all users a recall on all of their iphones. Which in turn will cost them much more, plus all of the bad PR which (doubtful with some but overall would work) costs them much more then profits, but loyal fans.
PS: Also depending on the terms of the lawsuit the customers could add that they want to have their contracts with AT&T dropped as part of a faulty advertisement and product (if you bought the service only for the product, and it doesn't work it doesn't seem like you should have to keep either).

Also I can not believe that Apple has taken that approach with the signal. The fact that the phone looses all of its reception by holding it in a way is still the problem. As far as messing up a calculation though, I'm honestly surprised that apple was willing to admit that they made such a mistake (considering that it is something that should have been tested and quickly resolved, not to mention how much of a "rookie" mistake it is just shows that the company may not be completely competent).

[citation][nom]Sythix[/nom]And we watch our beloved free market economy burn. The principles of capitalism include that when a business produces faulty products people will stop buying their products and force them to make quality ones. Granting lawsuits goes heavily against this principle. You bought an iphone knowing that most things at launch are buggy and knowing that apple doesn't care about customers. Now you're complaining about your reception and threatening to sue, instead of suing, don't buy apple products. Otherwise you're a hypocrite.[/citation]
I am not sure if you know what the free market vs capitalism really is. I am only addressing what you said though: You said that "The principles of capitalism include that when a business produces faulty products people will stop buying their products and force them to make quality ones.", this is a free market system statement. The main difference is how the government interacts in the business. So whether you buy or not, showing the company they need to make better products really has nothing to do with the economic system.

 

[surfer1337dude]

[citation][nom]Vermil[/nom]As for the "faulty" product, you will be extremely hard pressed to find a phone with better reception than the iPhone4. That's the real lowdown of it.[/citation]
I'm sorry but you are mistaken. There are plenty of phones that have much better reception. My cell for example almost always has full bars (Verizon Boulder by Casio), my last LG phone also always had full bars (keep in mind I live out in the country, and often go even further away from any city and away from cell towers). Unless you ment either smartphones (which I still doubt would only has 2 bars as apple has said, since 4=2), or if you ment on the AT&T network...although this would also be a mistaken comment since some of my friends are on it and get better reception (a bar or 2 less then verizon).

One more comment, directed at apple, how did you mess up the equation for signal strength...1+1=4?

 

[ohim]

Well popularity never comes without problems! They should have looked better at Microsoft and not bash and focus on doing of a better job to prevent them. In time with more popularity Mac OS will find itself in similar situations like Windows.

 

[blueomni]

In my opinion iPhone 4 is a really good product... at least while there are suckers wanting to buy overpriced stuff.
It sells well, so Apple must be happy with it. Personally, I would never buy an Apple product. I'm too used to have Windows on my desktop, and I couldn't care less if my phone is running Win Mob 6.0 legacy. If I want to browse the net on the go I can use my PSP (bigger screen, sucky browser) I can also play movies and games and I can even make phone calls nowadays with Skype on PSP 3000!

 

[Vermil]

[citation][nom]surfer1337dude[/nom]I'm sorry but you are mistaken. There are plenty of phones that have much better reception. My cell for example almost always has full bars (Verizon Boulder by Casio), my last LG phone also always had full bars (keep in mind I live out in the country, and often go even further away from any city and away from cell towers). Unless you ment either smartphones (which I still doubt would only has 2 bars as apple has said, since 4=2), or if you ment on the AT&T network...although this would also be a mistaken comment since some of my friends are on it and get better reception (a bar or 2 less then verizon). One more comment, directed at apple, how did you mess up the equation for signal strength...1+1=4?[/citation]
You seriously think number of bars is the reception?

 

[Abrahm]

[citation][nom]watcha[/nom]'Is it just me, or is anyone else failing to understand how a "software issue" can be caused by physical interactions that aren't interacting with the software?'If you press the 'call' button on a phone, and the software decides to switch the phone off, is it a software or a hardware error?Clearly - a software error.Removing the button OR fixing the software would fix this problem (yet clearly removing the button would be ridiculous).That proves that just because a problem is caused by interacting with the hardware in some way - doesn't mean that the problem is with the hardware. The software might be responding in the wrong way.The antenna of a phone is CLEARLY interacting with the software, or the software wouldn't be able to display bars at all.[/citation]
There is clearly a misunderstanding of how software interacts with hardware and a misunderstanding of my "physical interactions that aren't interacting with the software" statement.

Pressing a button sends a signal to the operating system that the button was pressed, and the event is passed on to the software that is listening for it. There is no signal sent to the software that the antenna was touched. Therefore, touching the antenna is a physical interaction that has absolutely no interaction with the software, and a software fix will do nothing to fix the antenna short, which is a physical issue.

 

[beayn]

@watha do you ever post on non-apple related articles?

Abrahm is exactly right, pressing the button sends a message to the OS, touching the antenna does not. The software is showing a reduced signal as a result. How is that a software issue? Apple said their formula shows a different signal strength than it actually is and they're putting out a fix for it, but that doesn't resolve the fact that when you touch the antenna, the signal strength changes.