Apple is really screwing things up when it comes to the iPhone 4 and its antenna issues. First, Steve Jobs sends an e-mail to an iPhone 4 user telling him to just don’t hold it that way (the way that causes the reception to drop). Really bad customer service, Steve! Well, shortly after he writes to another iPhone 4 user telling him to “stay tuned”, indicating that they’re working on something to fix it.
A few days after that, Apple released a letter on their website, telling us they just found out that the signal bars are displayed wrongly due to a bad formula for calculating how many bars to display. A software update will fix this. Which, as of July 13th, has still not showed up and the letter was posted July 2nd. You would think that wich such a big issue like this one, they would release the software update already.
Finally, Consumer Reports (USA) is now “not recommending” the iPhone 4 due to the antenna problems. Having tested three iPhone 4’s in a laboratory they concluded that it does in fact have a design flaw when it comes to the antenna. Their suggested fix? Well, watch the video below…
We think either Apple should supply free cases for the phone or come up with another solution. That’s why we are not recommending the iPhone 4.
Michael Gikas, Consumer Reports
I’m still waiting for Apple to release the software update, I wonder what exactly it will does. It doesn’t do much good if the only thing it fixes is how the signal bars are displayed, the signal will still suffer a lot when touching the antenna at its sensitive area.
Apparently Apple didn’t think the antenna problem is bad enough, so they have also started deleting threads on Apple Discussion boards that mentions the test done by Consumer Reports. I know the boards are Apple’s and they can moderate it as they want, I just don’t think it’s appropriate to “silence” their way out of this problem and the only thing they have accomplished are for all tech blogs (and maybe some media as well) to mention how they are removing several threads on the topic. Here’s one that Bing managed to cache before Apple moderators removed it.
Could we perhaps see an iPhone 4 recall being issued by Apple…?
I’m still getting an iPhone 4 though 🙂 Hopefully by the end of July.
I still cannot understand that Apple tries to silence this problem and the fact, that they refuse that this is a hardware issue…
This short conclusion-video from Consumer Report really seals the deal:
http://video.consumerreports.org/services/player/bcpid21495733001?bctid=111613310001
And despite of these problems, people are still going to get the iPhone 4 anyway.. like you, Klaus….and myself hahah! Sad, isn’t it
wow … Apples way of handling these issues have been a fail in so many ways I wouldn’t know where to start mocking them. I have no doubt the iphone 4 in every other way is a wonderful product, but it’s a shame it had to start off like this.
This should’ve been handled so much better, then again, customer service never was apples strong side – from what I hear.
I really wonder what is going on in Steve’s head right now…Decisions..Decisions. Well it is good to know that the Consumer Report is Not Recommending it. It is a big fail already. Hope so Apple does not recall the iPhones lol