In my previous post (iPhone 3G, No Thanks), I wrote why I didn’t go ahead and by the ‘much hyped, long waited, the killer-of-all-phones’ iPhone 3G. When I stumbled upon a forum thread, I am glad that I am correct. I should stay away from iPhone 3G until they have ironed out the issues and the quality problems. Read more.
Here are the defect list from users’ feedback from the forum:
- Dust under LCD
- LCD light leakage
- Wide range of cosmetic issues e.g. scratches, cracks, dent, etc.
- Dead pixels
- Yellowish screen
Those are on top of previous widely reported issues that deals with basic phone functionality e.g. poor 3G reception, poor battery life and so on. It seems iPhone 3G is both plagued with software (must better now) and hardware issues. My impression reading people experiences is that the quality control is must less than desireable. It is simply not a phone for someone who wanted to enjoy a reliable basic functionality and reasonable quality.
Reading futher, it seems that many consumers in Singapore had returned and exchanged their set multiple times up to 8 times to find an acceptable sets. I also learnt that there are many replacements were, in fact, a refurbished set. This makes sense as they don’t do repair but instead offer 1-to-1 exchange. With refurbished set, the comments were that cosmetic defects are present.
I felt that the yellowish screen would be the most serious of all hardware issues, it is reported that a black and white photo would become a sepia instead. Dead pixels often found not 1 but often 2 or more. Interestingly, users reported that the dead pixels are coming after used for a few days. In laptops, LCD TVs, mobile phones, dead pixels are present but at a very low percentage. The number of users who complained about dead pixels may indicate that lower defect tolereance is used thus explain the prevalent of dead pixels.
Dust under the screen is also noticable in phones that I have used before, but usually after a long period of usage. Even so, it’ll not be seen in every phone as some phone has better cover sealing. Again the multiple reports on such incidents out from the box may indicate the factory environment may not be as clean as it should be.
Speaking about production environment, there was a funny incident where a factory worker took her picture (may be part of testing or for fun sake) and forgot to delete/reset to factory default the phone prior shipping. Read more here.
If you need more information why iPhone 3G is not at a desirable quality and may be a nightmare for perfectionist, read more here.
I wonder how many more ‘uninformed’ people will have bad experience buying a ‘dream’ phone. I thought I had googled well before going to Singtel last week, but I never found one post about defect list on iPhone 3G. This just convinced me to totally skip iPhone right away.
So do you still want to get a 3G iPhone?
Tags: 3g, dead pixels, defect, dust, iPhone, problem, singtel, woes
