Consumer Reports: iPhone 4 Has Hardware Design Flaw
The New York Times Blog is reporting that Consumer Reports says that the iPhone 4 has a design flaw. Furthermore, its engineers have determined that this is a hardware flaw, and not a software flaw, in direct contradiction of Apple's public statement (reported by some as a public apology) that it would distribute a software update to fix the problem.
Apple's claims of irrational signal bar exuberance have crashed against the rocks of testing by actual engineers working for an impartial reviewer. These tests vindicate this writer for speculating that the iPhone's problem was hardware, not software-based, as Apple would later claim. This speculation was based on elementary principles of signal broadcasting.
Put differently, Apple's claim that this was nothing more than a perception problem collided directly with widespread user reports, scientific principles, and common sense.
Consequently, this statement by Consumer Reports, openly questioning the honesty of Apple's statements, is more than a mild embarrassment for Apple:
Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4’s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”
It is a public indictment of a statement explicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the Apple name, and implicitly backed by its own engineers and researchers.
Consumer Reports further announced that it will not recommend the iPhone 4 to consumers until the antenna problem is fixed without the user having to pay extra money (such as $29 to Apple for a case) to fix the problem.
This frontal assault on Apple's reputation also raises the specter of Consumer Reports' tests being cited in lawsuits against Apple demanding redress for selling consumers a flawed product, and expecting them to pay out of their own pockets to fix it.
How Apple will respond remains to be seen.
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