Your in the Army. Well first thanks, its because of people like you that I can do what I do.
Second, your in the Army and you doubt subpar equipment being passed off as good?
The military has plenty of examples of manufacturing problems being glossed over by the manufacturer only to have one of the military branches find out and insist they be fixed.
I worked in auto manufacturing. Both in IT and Chassis engineering, strange combo, but I worked a lot with manufacturing systems and with suppliers who ran into issues like this all the time.
When there is a bad part, you just keep on building, we'll fix it later.
Here is a good example. Mercedes Benz. Most American car companies look at warranty based on failures. They build 1 million cars and the top problem is a bad radio. 2 percent of the cars built have a bad radio. So they implement a running change to fix the radio. Determine the root cause, fix the problem, and slide the fixed unit right in the middle of production.
Mercedes however has assigned a dollar amount to a car for warranty. Let's say they decide that a S-Class Mercedes should not have more than $8,000 in warranty claims over the warranty period. So now a part goes bad, lets say the same radio but its only $300 to fix at the dealer and as a whole it does not push them over the $8,000 limit.
They just keep on building them and fix them later. They'll fix it next time it goes for a model change.
The facts add up:
1. You have a large group of people complaining about 2 problems. One is the bar/holding issue and the second is massive amounts of dropped calls and poor data service even with a solid connection.
2. White iPhone production mysteriously stopped with a very late announcement? If all the people on here who say Apple doesn't make production errors or don't get it, then why wait till the last day to announce a production problem? My guess is they found a problem. They fixed it, but to hit production targets and launch dates those white iPhone lines were turned into black iPhone lines to meet targets since the white/black mix is much higher on the black side.
3. The mysterious delays in shipping for all of those who ordered during the initial launch. Tons of people had their orders changed for no reason and pushed back.
4. The Apple guys reaction when I told him I bought a early launch phone, he specifically asked when we ordered them and when they were delivered. I was still well within any grace period for returns and the phone could not have been more than 8 days old. It was a canned question.
5. Apple is stingy with new phone replacements but after explaining my problems in detail, what I did to fix it, and I told him when we ordered our phones he pulled out 2 iPhone 4 replacements from what he called limited stock however in our 40 minute wait to work through and activate both phones I saw at least 3 Genius staff members dedicated to replacing iPhone 4's.
Too many things don't add up, including Apple's big denial. There is obviously a problem.
I just look at things logically. My first iPhone 4 was a huge pile of crap, people said those of us with bad phones are just whining and complaining defending a company they have no vested interest in. Well they replaced my phone and now it works as it should. If I was just trolling do you think I'd say I'm extremely happy with my replacement phone?
Don't have time for games, I just want what I pay for to work.
Plus Apple has a long history of producing defect laden products, denying there is a problem, and fixing it later, i.e the 27" iMac issues, SL breaking a whole lot of stuff, denying it was an issue, then a 3rd party called them out and MAGICALLY they produce a fix....
They produced a defective product, they deny it, while fixing it in the background.
Who knows how much the whole Foxconn suicide thing plays into this. Apple had enough bad PR, they going to get on the news and say how crappy Foxconn built bad phones?
Who knows but the facts add up to a batch of bad phones, that simple.
