iPhone 4 – Problems
Posted by Chris on Jul 7, 2010 in iOS Apps, iPhone, Technology | 0 comments
I was surprised when my fiancee told me she was getting me the iPhone 4 as my Father’s Day gift. She didn’t tell me this until after 6/15, which if she had told me before would have allowed me to pre-order on the 15th. Regardless I placed my “pre-order” on 6/21 with the information of Ships By: 7/14 Delivered By: 7/15-19. I was very excited to see that my order shipped on 6/5 and the new delivery time seems to be 7/13 via FedEx. It sucks having to wait for something this exciting but I suppose the wait will make it all the more worth while. I haven’t upgraded my iPhone in 2 years, I do all of my development and testing on the iPhone 3g/iPod Touch. Well enough about me lets talk about the problems that have been reported so far.
Yellow Dots and Streaks on the Screen
The yellow dots and streaks have been reported by a number of people, the problem really isn’t that severe and just seems to be from the adhesive for the glass not fully setting. The solution is simple use the phone and after a day or so of screen activity the adhesive will fully set and you will no longer have streaks or yellow dots.
Reversed Volume Buttons
I haven’t seen much information on this except for the occasional picture. The pictures seem to show that some iPhone’s were shipping with the buttons swapped putting the “-” on top and “+” on the bottom. This of course causes the “-” button to turn the volume up and the “+” to lower the volume. Whether this is a real problem or hoax, it doesn’t seem to make that big of a difference, how many people actually look at the buttons when adjusting the volume? Put a case on and you can’t see them anyway. For people who can’t live with this “unique” blunder, which could be worth money later on, take it to an Apple store and get another phone!
Reception Issues / Signal Bars / Grip of Death
Well this problem definitely seems to be getting the most attention especially, with the strange response from Apple. Apple claims that the formula to determine the number of signal bars to display has been wrong since the original iPhone came out, making the phone display up to 2 more bars than there really is. Okay so you say the problem has existed since the first iPhone, fine, you say my signal is actually 2 bars less, fine, but how does this have anything to do with losing signal this only describes the fact that the software displays two bars more than it should. The problem Apple seems to be focusing on would be the signal quality since the grip of death drops your bars all the way down. So is Apple saying that the software is wrongly displaying 5 bars, but when you change the way you hold the phone it changes the formula to display the actual 1 bar that you have always had? I don’t think so. On the other hand most of these popular youtube videos show the user losing all signal by using the grip of death, only one place actually did the test while on a call and guess what? The call would not drop or reduce quality no matter what the bars said / how he held the phone. I think this problem is some kind of software glitch that should be fixed in the next couple of weeks and is not that big of a deal, or at least not as big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be.
Lack of Supply
This has been one of the biggest disappointments and it seems like the disappointment could have been avoided. While selling 600,000 units in 1 day is quite a feat, actually that is 10x more than the 3GS launch. That being said why not stockpile the devices? Maybe there were development delays and they didn’t completely finish the iPhone until a few months before the release, if that is the case why not push the release back further to better accommodate demand? From a marketing POV they have done a great job of driving hype, but what happens when they over hype? If the product doesn’t live up to the hype then demand will fall and the supply will rise. If on the other hand the device does live up to its hype (which it seems to have for most people) then demand will increase and supply will continue to decrease, causing demand to increase even more since the device is so scarce and hard to get a hold of. Well most of this is my own theory and could be completely wrong but, why not just delay the release until they had adequate supply? My guess is they wanted to continue the annual tradition around the same time each year.
Price of the Bumpers
Well what did you expect? Apple put their name on the bumpers of course they are going to be $29. A few people have but the Lance Armstrong – Live Strong wrist bands to good use and say that with a small incision in the wrist band you can actually wrap the band around the outside of the phone and still have access to the dock and speakers. So spend your $29 because Apple told you to, or spend $1 and have a nice DIY bumper for your iPhone. Oh and if you happen to buy a breast cancer band, congrats you are also helping charity at the same time!
Waiting for my New iPhone
Well some of the problems will have to wait until I can actually test them out my self. My phone is due to arrive on 7/13 and I plan on getting it all set up and registered as a developer phone. Once this is done I can do some more examination in the “existing” problems and see if I can find any more. So I will be posting a review of the iPhone with in the next 2-3 weeks and hopefully have some positive posts as well!
Do you have a problem I didn’t mention? or just want to chime in? Feel free to leave comments!
-Chris
Related posts:
Subscribe
my iOS apps
Advertisement
