Apparently, a couple of iPhone 4 owners in Maryland weren’t very receptive to the “just avoid holding it that way” advice from Steve Jobs about how to deal with a problematic antenna that drops calls when the device is held a certain way.
They’ve taken Apple and AT&T to court and, via class action status for the suit, they’ve invited all of the other iPhone 4 owners to join in. The allegation: knowingly selling phones with a defective antenna design.
Here’s the ironic thing: this new antenna design - which looks like a band around the side of the new iPhone - was actually supposed to help improve reception, something that AT&T had failed to do in three years of selling the iPhone.
Which brings me to my thoughts about this suit against Apple and AT&T. Why did it take so long for an iPhone owner to drag these two companies into court? After all, reception has consistently been bad on the iPhone in some regions for as long as the two have been selling it. I suppose I could have dragged them to court myself when I was one of those disgruntled iPhone owners who suffered from poor iPhone reception in the San Francisco Bay Area. But instead, I chose to return my device and move on.
Both Apple and AT&T have both recognized in the past that connectivity and reception problems continued to plague users in some regions - and yet, they kept selling the iPhone in those regions. Where were the lawyers then?
Now that I think about it, the problem isn’t that Apple and AT&T are knowingly selling phones with reception problems. The bigger problem is that consumers keep buying them - knowing full well that the AT&T’s service ranks as the worst in some areas.
In that sense, iPhone owners whose calls get dropped only have themselves to blame.
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