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Legal
Apple sued over iPhone 4 antenna issue
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 5 July 2010
Apple are facing at least three lawsuits in relation to the iPhone 4’s antenna problem. As you have probably seen, after all the ballyhoo that surrounded the release of the latest Apple phone, many of the idiots who queued overnight to get their hands on the new device (don’t these people know you should never buy IT products when they first hit the market, they never work) reported that the phone’s mobile signal levels slumped if they held the phone in a certain way.
Apple were initially rather complacent about the fault, with Steve Jobs arguing that people were just holding the phone wrong. But before Team Apple had actually announced the launch of ‘how to hold your mobile’ classes at Apple Stores worldwide, the tech firm last week admitted it had found a bug which meant the iPhone sometimes said it had a stronger network signal than it really did.
It seems by holding the phone in a certain way the bug was rectified, which is why the signal appeared to fall. Or something like that. Conveniently the fault Apple admitted to is a software issue which can be fixed with an operating system upgrade that can be downloaded to the device. Which is much better than there actually being a structural fault with the phone itself, which could cost millions to fix.
But as Apple were admitting the bug last week, the antenna issue was going legal in the US. One lawsuit, filed on Tuesday last week, hopes to be a class action, meaning if Apple were to lose and damages be awarded to the claimant, anyone else affected by the bug would also be due damages. It sues both Apple and AT&T, still the iPhone’s exclusive network in the US.
The lawsuit reportedly says: “The iPhone 4 manifests design and manufacturing defects that were known to defendants before it was released which were not disclosed to consumers, namely, a connection problem caused by the iPhone 4’s antenna configuration that makes it difficult or impossible to maintain a connection to AT&T’s network”.
Apple are yet to respond to the lawsuit.
