I have been following the ongoing saga with the iPhone 4 through web articles and podcasts. You would think that after the horrible job Apple did with not having enough phones at the time of release, they would at least make sure the phone worked properly. Shawn Wu of Kaufman Bros. estimated before launch a decrease from 9 million sold this year to 7.5 million. Apple is still making tons of money off this phone which leads me to my next problem with them. It seems that the iPhone 4's antenna does not work properly. If you hold your hand over the lower left portion of the phone, the signal drops significantly. According to a Bloomberg report, the knowledge of this problem was known before launch all the way up to Steve Jobs himself. Of course, Apple denies knowing anything about this. What is worse, they are trying to tell you that the signal bars are just misdisplayed showing more bars than you actually have. For example, if it shows 4 bars, you may only have 2. I even heard on Buzz Out Loud episode 1262 that they are saying this has been a problem with iPhones for the last 4 years. Sounds like they are saying their phone works fine, its just AT&T has crappy signal. How must AT&T feel? I guess the real kick in the pants is that all this antenna mess can be fixed with a $40 rubber case or "bumper" as I have heard it called. You would think Apple would be mailing these to everyone who bought an iPhone 4. Nope! I heard on Buzz Out Loud that Apple's customer service actually told sales people that they are not allowed to give away the cases and that people must buy them. It looks like Apple falls flat on their face again.
