The term 'iPhone killer' has been applied to many handsets, as manufacturers have strived to produce a mobile phone that matches the market appeal of the Apple iPhone. And, although there are many worthy alternative handsets available nowadays, none have really achieved the status of the 'iPhone killer'. However, that may be about to change, and the contender for the title is a handset that no one could have predicted just a few weeks ago.....
….We're talking about the iPhone 4.
Now, before I continue, this is not just another 'let's bash Apple' type posting. I'm a very happy owner of an Apple iPhone 3G S, and the success Apple have had with one product is to be commended, as the iPhone has forced manufacturers to look at their products from a different perspective, and the emergence of applications as a driving force in handset sales owes a lot to the success of Apple and the App Store. But all the good work Apple have done in building up the iPhone could be undone, by the latest version of their own device.
When the iPhone 4 was announced, Apple paid specific attention to the new antenna design, and how that would lead to an improved experience for consumers, given the issues suffered on the original iPhone, 3G and 3G S. Instantly some people were claiming that the design was flawed, but an assumption was made that perhaps Apple had engineered the antenna in such a way as to avoid any potential problems.
The iPhone 4 has sold in millions since its launch, but almost from day 1, there have been numerous articles across the internet, forum postings and tweets, reporting problems with the phone. In what has become known as the iPhone Death Grip, holding the iPhone 4 in a particular way leads to a loss of reception, where the phone, from showing full signal, will lose reception bar by bar, until all reception is lost. Apple's initial response to this was to claim people were 'holding the phone the wrong way', a response that only gave ammunition to rival manufacturers to mock Apple further. Then there came the response from Apple that in fact, to their great surprise, the way all iPhones (not just the iPhone 4) had been programmed to calculate network strength was flawed, and they were working on a software fix to resolve the issue.
Problem is, the whole fiasco has crept into the public conscience. It is becoming common knowledge, not just among phone geeks and those who take an interest in the industry, that the iPhone has poor reception. It is becoming a running joke, with reference made on TV shows, and in mainstream media. Consumer testing on the device is delivering results so poor that those testing the phone state that they cannot recommend people buy it, and these reports are being picked up and run on main news channels. At some point the question needs to be asked, what will Apple do? Some are suggesting that a major recall could be given on the device, which could be a PR disaster. But if nothing is done, it could be even worse.
It should be pointed out there there are some iPhone 4 users who claim to be perfectly happy with their new phones, and don't understand what people are complaining about. However they are, it seems, in the minority. The longer this issue runs, the worse it will get, until we reach the point where the damage is done, and it is too late to repair the reputation of the iPhone. And the real iPhone killer, will be the iPhone itself.
