Paging iPhone 4 Quality Assurance Team
- Proximity sensor failure: The screen turns on and off during calls, which allows my cheek to touch buttons on the screen causing inadvertent muting, hangups, tones, and even accidentally adding a new call and merging them (that was fun). Basically, I cannot make calls without using speaker, otherwise they’re a mess. This issue is widespread (see Apple Support discussion thread, Engadget).
I haven’t had the grip of death problem or the yellow screen spots or any of the other things people have reported, but boy do I ever have this problem.
I can’t talk on my phone as a phone. Full stop. I can wear those awful little Apple earbuds or I can scream at it from a distance like a piece of pizza, but I can’t put the phone up against my head without playing an accidental touchtone symphony or starting very awkward conference calls or just plain hanging up.
I know: blah, blah, early adopter, blah, first-world problem. I know I accept some risk for having to have something the second it comes out and I won’t complain about that. I will complain because from the sound of the posts in the giant Apple Support thread Garrett linked to, Apple’s responses to what’s obviously a common problem have been limited to:
- Reset your phone (Doesn’t work.)
- Take off your 3GS case (I’m not using one.)
- Wow, we’ve never heard of anything like that before. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)
I’ll tough it out because I love the camera and am addicted to the Retina display, but mostly because I’m terrified that whatever replacement unit I got from Apple would still be affected plus have some of the other problems I seem to have avoided.
Fingers crossed for magic software pixie dust in iOS 4.0.1.
