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Wednesday August 13, 2008
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The first cracks have begun to appear in the wall of silence regarding the iPhone 3G's reception problems, which seem to affect some but not all iPhones in several different countries.
Over the past two days, two wireless carriers have stepped up to the plate and admitted there's something wrong with some models of our Editor's Choice smart phone. The most unequivocal statement comes from Vodafone Australia, who told the Sydney Morning Herald that "the iPhone 3G issues were device-specific and nothing to do with the carriers' networks," according to the newspaper. That stands against Apple's practice so far of referring questions about iPhone 3G reception here in the US to AT&T.
An even more intriguing twist came on T-Mobile NL's official blog, where they posted on August 12 (and this is a cleaned-up horrible machine translation from the Dutch), "We suspect therefore that it is a hardware/software specific issue of the iPhone itself."
After that was reported on, T-Mobile backpedaled, writing (machine transltion cleaned up until it gets really awesome at the end), "On some Internet sites T-Mobile is cited as saying that we assign some problems with 3G reception to the apparatus itself. This is not what we want to transmit. ... Fact remains, however, that there are iPhone3G customers in both the Netherlands and in other countries which find that the use experience on this apparatus is not sufficient. We do not know the reason for this, and for this reason do we there now intensive research nasty."
Thank you, Babelfish. Intensive research nasty is now needed.
In other widely reported news, extremely prescient Nomura Securities analyst Richard Windsor told GigaOm that the iPhone 3G may have an "immature" chipset from Infineon causing these sometimes-but-not-always reception troubles. Whether Apple could work around this with a firmware update is a mystery, because of course, Apple isn't talking.
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August 15, 2008 12:50 AM
I am really suprised that Apple with its customer focus approach has not yet communicated to its customers.
The issue. Does not seem to affect all phones and a broad statment stating that they are investigating it in conjunction with their telecom patners would have eased the situation.
Instead the telecom partners are talking and they have all the reasons to be upset given that the exclusivity to sell iphone costs them 20% of the revenue generated by the iPhone usage.
August 19, 2008 11:29 AM
If you want a free, objective way to check the reception in your area BEFORE you lock yourself with a specific carrier, you should really check out "Got Reception?" (http://www.gotreception.com).
August 22, 2008 9:16 AM
I'm sorry I have to disagree with the claim that Apple has a "customer focus approach" .
They make great products, are completely oriented towards creating great user experiences in their products, but couldn't care less about individual customers. You have to do it their way or lump it. They've always been that way.
It works because their products are usually so good (and cool), people rarely have a problem with them. There's also always the reality distortion field :-)