Digital Zone 217: Flaming iPhone 4

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on July 12, 2010 under Digital Zone Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

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In this edition of the Digital Zone, we talked about:

• iPhone 4 class action lawsuit
• iPhone 4 catches fire
• iPhone 4 patch won’t fix antenna problem
• Blackberry owns phone OS wars
• Proposed e-commerce taxes
• Five billion mobile phone owners
• Best Buy enters mobile phone space
• Google paying for Twitter spam research

A federal judge says a monopoly abuse lawsuit against Apple and AT&T’s mobile phone unit can move forward with a class action status.  The lawsuit consolidates several filed by iPhone buyers starting in late 2007, a few months after the first generation of Apple’s iPhone went on sale.  An amended complaint filed in June 2008 takes issue with Apple’s practice of “locking” iPhones so they can only be used on AT&T’s network, and its absolute control over what applications iPhone owners can and cannot install on the gadgets.  The lawsuit also says Apple secretly made AT&T its exclusive iPhone partner in the U.S. for five years. Consumers agreed to two-year contracts when they purchased their phones, but were in effect locked into a five-year relationship with AT&T, the lawsuit argued.  The actions hurt competition and drove up prices for consumers, the lawsuit claims.  In court documents filed July 8, Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said parts of the lawsuit that deal with violations to antitrust law can continue as a class action. The class includes anyone who bought an iPhone with a two-year AT&T agreement since the device first went on sale in June 2007.  The judge dismissed other claims against Apple, among them allegations that the company broke laws when an update to the iPhone’s operating software caused some phones to stop working and deleted programs that users had purchased.  The lawsuit seeks an injunction to keep Apple from selling locked iPhones in the U.S. and from determining what iPhone programs people can install. It also seeks damages to cover legal fees and other costs.

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Cliphanger.

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In an exclusive story on the Boy Genius Report, a flamed-out iPhone 4 was returned because “the brand new iPhone 4 caught on fire while being hooked up to a computer using the Apple USB cable that accompanied the device.” Neither AT&T nor the Boy Genius had seen a flaming iPhone before. In the comments section of the Boy Genius post, blogger Carlos Martins wrote the following: “A couple days ago, while doing a UStream from my iPhone 4 I had to plug it to charge it (while streaming), and in a couple of minutes I got my first ever ‘excess temperature’ warning – with the iPhone entering safe mode! Yesterday, as I plugged it to charge at night like usual, it began heating up seriously!” The Boy Genius Report said that “an Apple Store did confirm to our AT&T connection that this did appear to be a defective USB port and not some sort of user error.” The damage to the phone was severe and it did slightly burn the owners hand, according to the story. “The USB port in the phone was slightly melted and the cord was badly melted.”

An upcoming firmware patch to address what Apple is calling a miscalculation in the iPhone 4′s signal-strength formula won’t solve connection problems. Apple finally said that the iPhone 4′s signal drops more than the usual amount and is blaming the problem on an incorrect formula that displays the signal strength too high. Apple said the problem will be resolved with an update using a formula recommended by AT&T. The update will be available for all versions of the iPhone. The company has advised customers to “avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”

comScore is reporting that Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry platform and Apple’s iPhone remained the top mobile operating systems for May, though both OSes lost some ground to Google’s Android. That data, however, does not include the iPhone 4 launch. RIM had 41.7 percent of the market in May, followed by Apple at 24.4 percent, and Microsoft at 13.2 percent. Google’s Android, which was in fourth place with 13 percent market share, saw a 4 percent uptick from 9 percent in February. Palm, which was recently acquired by Hewlett-Packard, rounded out the top five with 4.8 percent of the market, down from 5.4 percent three months ago. In terms of device makers, Samsung was the top OEM in May with its phones in the hands of 22.4 percent of mobile subscribers – an increase of 1 percent. That was followed closely by LG, which had 21.5 percent of the market, a 0.2 percent drop. Motorola slipped into third place with 21.5 percent, a 1.1 percent drop. Rounding out the top five were RIM, with 8.7 percent, and Nokia at 8.1 percent.

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Bluehost.

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CNET is reporting that Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts wants to tax online purchases. The latest version of the Main Street Fairness Act — formally introduced — would establish a national sales tax collection system, using a 2002 Act called the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement to simplify state, county, and city taxes that every physical retailer has to collect. CNET says 24 states have signed on to the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement, and brick-and-mortar retailers including Wal-Mart, Target and IKEA have rallied behind Delahunt’s attempts to “normalize” online and offline sales.

The number of wireless service subscriptions worldwide passed 5 billion this week, according to an estimate by LM Ericsson, the Swedish maker of wireless equipment. The estimate is based on data from carriers worldwide. In 2000, there were 720 million wireless subscriptions. Most of the recent growth comes from India and China. Countries like the U.S., the number of new cell phone subscriptions has fallen drastically in the last six months.

Best Buy released details about its Best Buy Connect mobile broadband service, which will provide 5GB of data usage for about $60 per month. Users can install the program on their laptops or netbooks and access 3G coverage in 18,900 cities and 1,855 airports throughout the U.S., Best Buy said consumers would connect to the Web on their mobile phone. Sprint will provide the underlying 3G network. Pricing varies depending on your data usage and contract status. Users who sign a one- or two-year contract can get 5GB per month for $59.99 or 500MB for $39.99 per month. Overage charges will be 5 cents per MB for those with the 5GB plan and 10 cents for those with 500MB. The only difference between the plans is the early termination fee (ETF). If you sign a one-year contract and leave early, your ETF will be $125, while those who sign a two-year contract will incur a $175 ETF. Pricing for non-contract service, however, is the same as those with a contract – $59.99 per month for 5GB and 500MB for $39.99 – but non-contract holders also have a 250MB option for $29.99 per month. Overage fees will be 5, 10, or 20 cents per MB, and no ETF. Best Buy said it will e-mail customers who are approaching their monthly limit to avoid overage charges.

Google is paying for research to shut down spammers on Twitter and Facebook. By using dozens of Twitter accounts, researchers at Texas A&M University are creating “honeypots,” or fake accounts that are supposed to lure spammers, who are eager to spread malware or phish for information, to social networks. The honeypot accounts, like http://twitter.com/tayBourne, automatically post updates drawn from a collection of 120,000 real tweets harvested from Twitter. The team has also deployed honeypots on MySpace, and created software that uses dummy profiles on both networks to learn about spammer tactics. So far, 61 honeypots have tempted and collected 30,867 spammers on Twitter. The fake accounts try not to mimic a real person and are allocated to a dark address space and legitimate users are segregated from the spammers. The researcher said that most of the spammers pretend to be college-age females from California and target men.

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by LegalZoom.com.
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