Apple has been under fire in recent weeks for being unable to fix a number of faults in the iPhone 3G. A US iPhone user has become so frustrated with what she calls a “Defective iPhone 3G” that she has decided to launch a lawsuit against Apple. If enough users join the suit (which seems likely based on initial responses) it will attain class action status.
The problems lie in the performance of the iPhone over 3G networks. Users are complaining that it isn’t as fast as described in the Apple adverts and that performance and reliability are being affected.
Apple is usually quick to issue software updates to fix performance glitches but this has yet to happen with the 3G issues. Users are speculating that the problems might be hardware based rather than software based which would be a much bigger problem for Apple to handle.
Jessica Alena Smith, the Alabama resident suing Apple, said that she was persuaded to buy the phone after seeing TV ads about how fast it was on the 3G network.
One could barely turn on the television without hearing that the new iPhone 3G was ‘twice as fast for half the price,’” reads the complaint. Immediately after the purchase, however, Smith noticed that the iPhone’s data connection, e-mail, SMS, and other communications were slower than expected, and that the device only appeared to connect to AT&T’s 3G network less than 25 percent of the time. She also experienced an “inordinate amount of dropped calls,” according to the lawsuit.
iPhone users in the US have been reporting patchy 3G coverage since the device was launched but users in the UK don’t appear to be having the same issues leading some to speculate that AT&T, the iPhone carrier, might be causing the problems.