14 DAY TRIAL // A company whose business includes the adoption of Apple’s iPhones has revealed that, upon receiving five iPhone 4 units, the staff discovered reception issues with the phones Dropped calls were experienced particularly when iPhone 4 was held in a manner that covers the black line separating the phone’s outer steel frame, which doubles as the antenna.
A report by AppleInsider claims that this company, which asked not to be named, is a faithful Apple customer that has equipped employees with Apple iPhones since the device was originally launched three years ago. With the release of every new iPhone, the company upgraded its existing handsets to the latest model. With the iPhone 4 now rolled out, the company rushed to purchase five units for its business.
Upon receiving the new smartphones, “it was readily apparent something wrong with the phones,” the report reveals. Employees would reportedly experience a call drop within 10 seconds of touching the bottom left of the phone. "Literally, we live in an area where we get five bars," said the business owner. "You can almost see a line-of-site cell tower. But if you literally just touch the black line (in the bottom left of the iPhone 4), you lose a call."
Unaware of any known issues with the device, the company contacted Apple to clarify the situation. The business owner got hold of “an entry Apple representative”, the report says, before being transferred over to a technical support expert. Reportedly, a representative admitted that even Apple’s staffers were experiencing said reception issues when gripping their personal iPhone 4 handsets by the left side.
After being requested to send video evidence that they were experiencing issues with their phones, the company in question was reportedly offered free Bumpers to alleviate the problems. Before being offered the protective accessories, a senior iPhone support representative reportedly informed the business owner that “all iPhone 4 hardware was experiencing the same problem.”
Last week, a leaked AppleCare internal memo showed Apple’s stance on offering up free Bumpers to affected customers - “We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers," the memo reportedly stated.
There is much confusion surrounding Apple’s iPhone 4 reception woes, with Apple claiming iPhone 4 merely displays the wrong number of signal bars, while end-users continue to rack up complaints indicating signal strength is indeed affected in certain conditions. It remains to be seen whether the promised firmware fix will put an end to this unacceptable device behavior.
For more coverage on this burning topic, check out the related links.