First of .. the 3% you state are defective devices, as in screen broken, button doesn't react anything like those. We have no information on how high this number is for the iPhone4 and it isn't really the point of discussion. None of those is included in either the 0.55% complains nor the x% return-no-questions-asked stats Apple presented.
Yep. That 3% is returns for defective devices. If the iPhone 4's all-inclusive return rate *including* devices without broken screens, etc. is significantly lower than that, then they're *well* below that 3% mark. No matter how you mix it, a 1.6% return rate is phenomenal in the consumer electronics world.
The 0.55% of people calling sounds like a good number, but frankly we have no idea what it means. Steve Jobs said, that is the number of people calling AppleCare "primary about reception issues" (paraphased), but whether that is a high or low number, we don't know. HTC stated they had 0.016% calling for the Desire I think. Also .. it doesn't include people reporting problems in store or with AT&T where they probably bought the phone. What about people abroad .. how are they included in those stats.
Go reread that HTC quote. (I think it was the Evo.) They said that 0.016% of the calls to their support line were about issues with that particular phone. They didn't gave the ratio relative to the population of *all* calls to their support line, not calls to the support line from people who owned the phone in question. That's a misleading statistic, full stop.
Apple probably doesn't have the numbers for people who complained to AT&T. They would, however, likely have the return-rate numbers, because a returned item will be returned to the manufacturer.
I don't think Apples number are flat out wrong. But since we have little to no information on how they were generated (like what actually qualified as "primary reception problem") and no baseline to compare to .. those numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
True, but there's a difference between 'a grain of salt' and dismissing them out of hand as worthless like KnightWRX has been doing. (Despite the fact that he has no numbers to provide, much less any that are more accurate.)
The "problem" is that only Apple has the real numbers, so there is no fair or objective way of telling what is really happening and how big the impact was. The only thing we can tell is, that the iPhone4 is still on backorder .. so, apparently a ton of people still want one.
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Which supports the contention that despite the noise in the media, this isn't a particularly wide-spread issue as far as people actually being effected. (It's possible for every single phone to have the issue, but only have an incredibly small portion of owners be effected by it.)
I found out this weekend that my parents had upgraded their 3Gss to 4s. My mom had no complaints. My dad had been bit by the proximity sensor issue a couple times. Neither one of them had run into the signal issue, even at my sister's place, out in the boonies where AT&T only gives 3 bars of Edge). They both use a case of a design I wouldn't have chosen, but they did the same thing with their 3Gss as well.
Side Note: I played with my dad's for a bit, and I'm really sold on the 'retina display'. Seriously, that thing is amazing. I'll be upgrading when my contract runs out, though it will likely be the iPhone 5 at that point.
Not quite so side note: If you're going to paraphrase someone, don't wrap it in quotes. Especially not twice. Especially not without indicating it was a paraphrase in both places. Best case, it's sloppy. Worst case, its intentionally misleading.
