Apple's iPhone 4 more susceptible to damage than predecessor - Page 2

Okay... I have to say it...

That's vaporware.

Yes, mine. Every day.

I'm sorry but I find it hard to believe anything you say.

Very utilitarian looking in a Swiss army kind if way. Nicely done but not my style. I have the Apple bumper but for me it spoils the look and makes it harder to get in and out of pockets. I liked the 3G, liked the feel of it but the 4 is amazingly beautiful in my view. If it could loose 30% of it's thickness it would be even better. Maybe one day.

Me too. I dropped mine onto a relatively soft linoleum floor from 2 feet. Crack from home button to antena gap--it was still fully functional (I don't know about $199 down the drain) but I was dissappointed.

Took it to my Apple Store, admitted that it was my fault, and 5 minutes later I had a full replacement.

I have a case and much more care now, all is good now!

Tell that to the morons in the aesthetics department at Apple. Apparently they didn't have a clue about this. Yes, put your antennae in direct contact with the hand and make sure you make the phone out of glass so that it shatters. Smart move.

Everything I said above is pure un-exagerrated truth. I'm not that upset about the damage to my phone when I dropped it though because it was my fault I dropped it.

The thing I find shocking (and deserving of that word), is the policy of replacing a brand new phone with factory faults (however slight), with a refurbished phone and a 90 day warranty. That's just too close to out and out theft for my liking and I never would have thought they would do it until it happened to me.

Also, the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

They will never sell any of those doomed phones...

People buy expensive and fragile crap all the time.

too bad apple doesn't do 'completecare' like dell did.

Thanks for sharing. Nice find.

As a counterpoint, it doesn't really matter how much glass, or what proportion of the device is clothed in it. The proportion of phones affected is higher. You could say that it is lower than expected, I suppose, but it's not particularly meaningful in context.


Don't consumer laws protect against this kind of behaviour? It would (or should) be patently illegal to sell a broken device and replace it with a substitute with less warranty.

That's what I thought. It seems almost criminal, but apparently this is their official policy. I've been arguing with various customer service reps for about a month at least and they all so far say the same thing.

the phone cost 800 bucks or so and they want me to take a second hand replacement (currently worth about two hundred dollars), and lose all but 90 days of the one year warranty.

Go Apple?

It's unfortunate that such a great phone is more likely to get damaged.
One thing I think we all can be confident about is that IPHONE5 will be more durable.

Yeah, too bad Apple's not following in Dell's footsteps. A tragedy.

How's Dell doing, btw?

Or less. But does it really matter?

And a significant number of my associates. Yeah. Sorry. I hate it when a perfectly good snark gets slammed like that.

From all comments about the sides past the display being too large when the iPhone has always tried to minimize that it does crack me up a bit to here someone say that its too thin. It did seem a little more awkward to type on without a case.



The display and touch-panel are glued to it, as well as it having some cutouts in the glass and requiring the entire phone to be taken apart, not just 2 screws, so it absolutely would be more expensive.



I dropped mine twice last week in the same spot in an asphalt parking lot. Both times I was fumbling with my new headphones when it slipped and I was desperately trying to catch it about 4 feet up in the air. I can see it all in slow motion, but luckily nothing was damaged.

I did drop my MBP today and bend the aluminium of the display. Its only a few months old so this really sucks.



Werent the Bumpers out with the iPhone, though in very short supply? Overall, your point is very valid and I wonder how many users were using a protective case when the display broke. Id also like to know what percentage of front glass panels were broken between these models.



This is the highest quality phone and iPhone Ive ever had the pleasure to use and i cant imagine how you can make the statements youve made when there are clearly people with good experiences and easy replacements If you are stating it as anecdotal, it sure doesnt read that way to me.

i'm surprised the iPhone 4 isn't as durable as the 3GS; it's really unfortunate.

Your comments make no sense.

Everything I said, was from my personal experience with the iPhone and my generalised experience with "Apple products lately." Primarily I was talking about my personal experience with the current iPHone 4 and everything I said was just a factual rendition of what happened to me.

I don't understand why you say "How can you say (what I said)"? I can say what I said because that's what happened. I am telling anyone that cares to listen that Apple's policy is to replace a brand new phone with a second hand replacement phone, because this is Apple's stated policy to me in a variety of emails and phone calls I've had over the issue of my defective iPhone 4. These are simply facts. I was told specifically in person at the Apple store by two different representatives that "almost no one" gets a brand new phone as a replacement for the broken one they bring in. In most cases it's a contract phone, the warranty isn't at issue, and the person only paid the two hundred bucks for it anyway.

People are primarily being given "service models" that are assembled from returned iPhones and that contain some new and some refurbished parts. This is what I was told (multiple times), and this is what I was offered.

I don't *know* that iPhone 4's are overall having quality issues because I don't have hundreds of stories available to me to tell that for a fact. I did however do what I said I did and test the 12 phones available to me in the Apple store when I visited to get mine fixed, and the results were exactly as I said. I do also have lots of anecdotal evidence that comes to me in my work and from reading the same forums that you do.

In terms of the general lower quality of Apple's offerings lately I am basing that on being a technician at a large University that sees large number of Apple products on a daily basis and has to fix them for others. I also personally buy almost every Apple product that comes out, as do many members of my extended family and friends who also approach me for service and fixing things when they go wrong.

What I have seen is a distinct *drop* in the overall quality of the offerings. Especially with iPhones, and especially with iPods. This is not surprising, nor is it any kind of mystery. Apple has expanded it's operations probably a hundred fold in the time in question and is making many many more devices than it ever has before. Any time a company expands that rapidly and expands it's sales and product offerings that rapidly, it's almost a given that quality would drop so it's not like I'm advancing some weird theory here.

I can see how people might be upset about some of what I'm saying and perhaps I'm being overly adamant in my remarks, but it's just the facts and I'm adamant about it because I'm mad about being offered this shoddy deal from a company that I otherwise think is pretty hot stuff.

Prof, I was pretty pissed several months back about my MacBook Alu 2ghz. The trackpad was unresponsive, I noticed the display clutch was out of alignment, and discs got stuck in the DVD drive because a tiny metal piece on the bottom covering came out. It took me about a few good weeks out here (remember no Apple Stores here, just Resellers) and some time on the phone with AppleCare (official Apple phone support). That said, after a month or so things were sorted out. New display, new trackpad, new bottom case.

I would say the Mac quality control has decreased in the past several years but iPad seems quite good.

iPhone, well, it is a unique case because of how desirable yet somewhat risky in terms of the design.

Sorry to hear about your experience with being offered only a refurbished/etc unit? That's the weird part.

Apple is not perfect, and they can be frustrating.

I got my free case now (InCase Snap Smoke) so while it does make my iPhone 4 brick-ish I feel more secure if it drops. Using it naked is super stylish but yeah, you wouldn't want to know how much it would cost to replace it*, assuming if they even have stock.

*One month's salary, in my case.

I haven't read that but I don't doubt it. Some of the patents from Apple i've read seem to be heading toward a solution by the case being -aware- of where your hand is. I almost never had the problem with the earlier style. Cases are difficult I find because they create a ridge around the edge and the ridge creates issues with flicking or getting near the screen edge.

I never used any kind of case for prior models, the 4 though, it's mandatory or it's dead.


I'm with you on that. I saw the 2G as a pure beta model, not just the unit but the limited roll out and everything else. It was a test to figure out how to do it globally. I see the 4 the same way, the 5 will not be the same, it will use what has been learned. I would not be surprised to see the end of glass, like an entire liquid metal unit.


Exactly, it is a weak point. All the talk of rigid body and harder than sapphire glass simply doesn't get that actual strength comes from flexibility / give. Hard just equals brittle.

They need to invent FoamGlass™. Either that or hopefully in the next 100 years we have devices made out of self-healing biological material. Or nanobots, maybe. Then they'll take over the world and that'll be the end of life as we know it.

mine is... i hate those bumpers and cases... makes the iPhone 4 look like iPhone 3G/3GS upfront...

btw... do you own one??

Is it just me or do you all see a nice improvement in battery life with a case on. I also turned off Notifications though MobileMe mail is still set to push. I might have used it without Notifications and without a case for a few days, with the case it seems to have better battery life?

Apples marketing was pretty slick about that. They used Jonathan Ives with his authoritative British accent to say how it was "30x harder than plastic (scratch resistance though they didnt note which plastic) and compared it to the "strength of sapphire crystal (which is extreme scratch resistance but not exceedingly unbreakable). Its by far the best phone on the market which exceptional design and build quality but its still glass sandwiching that milled stainless steel frame.

I see that your anecdote was a personal experience and I’m sorry it was frustrating, but your conclusion seems to be all encompassing, hence my comment. To me it doesn’t sound like you aren’t being objective.

The reality is that all CE is mass produced and there will be issues that arise. It happens and that won’t be changing anytime soon. Even if the percentage defective units is cut in half over the previous model if you are selling more than twice as many means you’ll have more total defective units on the market. Add to it the potential for some bad customer service and you have a unfavorable but typically rare double whammy.

I frankly find this article misleading. Saying it's "more prone to damage" seems to imply that it is more prone to damage under normal conditions. In reality, just the opposite is true. It's far more durable than its predecessors unless you drop it on a hard surface or what not. Under normal use though, it's better. It's the first iPhone that doesn't NEED a case. I had a 3G without a case for a few months. I bought one after noticing the back was getting seriously scratched under normal use. I also had no case for my iPhone 4 until I got a free bumper. No scratches to speak of during that time. The only defect is a small chip on one of the edges that resulted from me dropping it on asphalt.

This thread is pretty much dead now anyway but you're making a classic logical mistake here. You have no more evidence that Apple's quality isn't "dropping lately" than I do that it is, less in fact because I have the anecdotal evidence of experience with a large amount of hardware over a long period of time and as far as you've stated, everything you know about the issue seems to come from reading the press. You've mentioned several times about how "rare" my issue is, but you simply don't know that to be a fact.

So instead of a 12 month warranty on your new phone, they wanted you to accept a used phone with a 3 month warranty?

I find that abusive.

Those things look great. I hope they make it to market. I signed up for the pre-order.

Never in my life have I heard of a company treating its customers in such a shabby manner.

This cannot possibly be Apple's official position. It is sleazy.

I just drop my iPhone 4 on cement...no crack nothing...use the bumper, it will protected your phone from cracking.

I once bought an expensive digital camera at a local good camera store. It was a gift. It broke on day 2.

I took it back to the store. The owner loudly proclaimed "You shouldn't have to put up with that!". My wife didn't want another one of the same. So he sold me a Nikon at a deep discount.

Ever since then, I have always bought every camera I've ever bought from that local store. I once decided on a nice Canon, and looked up the prices online. He couldn't match the prices available from Amazon, et. al. I still bought it from him.

The moral of this story is to NOT buy from a big chain like the Apple store. Go to a local merchant who takes care of his customers, and whose primary goal is to make you a customer for life.

There's also other places to buy Apple products that have customer-oriented policies. If you go to Best Buy, for example, you get both the Apple policies AND the Best Buy policies. So in your case, you could have pointed out that you could return the phone for a full refund, and then turn around and get a new one. But likely, Best Buy would have simply replaced your defective Apple product with a new one, with full warranty, without stupid games. you also get free coupons for discounts at Best Buy - last I knew it was somewhere around 4%.

ISTM that the Apple store is far from the best vendor if customer protections and policies are what is desired.

While running a few weeks ago, I dropped my iphone 4. Time stopped as I watched it tumble out of my armband and fall from five feet to the concrete sidewalk and then bounce a couple of times.

I picked it up, expecting the worst only to be extremely happy to find only a couple of nicks on the stainless steel. The glass survived the fall uninjured.

Everyone has their story, but mine turned out well.

Hang on a minute. You dropped your phone, damaged it and are now angry at Apple because they won't replace it with a new one?