In the wake of continuing reports of 3G 
connectivity problems from an unknown percentage of iPhone 3G users, one Alabama woman has had enough: Jessica Alena Smith has reportedly filed a complaint against Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and is seeking class action lawsuit status. The suit alleges that the iPhone 3G did not provide twice the speed as promised by Apple in the company's "Twice as fast. Half the price" marketing messages.
The complaint, filed Aug. 19 in the Northern District of Alabama, reportedly covers breach of express warranty, breach of the implied warranty of merchantability, and unjust enrichment.
There are certainly plenty of iPhone 3G lovers -- and a certain percentage of customers whose love is turning sour. While many iPhone 3G users have not reported any 3G connectivity problems, it remains unclear whether the issues some users are having with the devices' speed are due to faults in the phones themselves or the networks on which they're being used.
"3G Service for AT&T (NYSE: T) is relatively new on a national level because they are still in build-out mode. Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless certainly had a bigger jump in deploying that," William Ho, research director of wireless 
services for Current Analysis , told MacNewsWorld.
"That said, there [have] not been issues with those carriers in the past about dropped calls and such because their implementation kept voice calls on the legacy 2.5G network and data fenced into the EV-DO network channels," he explained, noting that call connectivity is also affected by the spectrum that a carrier has in any given area.
Some Fingers Point to Device
Reports of connectivity problems have not, however, been limited to AT&T users. Similar reports have also come from outside the U.S., where the phones run on other carriers' networks.
Theories regarding the root of the problem range from immature Infineon chipsets to a software problem that could be fixed by an iPhone 3G update distributed through iTunes. Indeed, Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly responded to a customer complaint via e-mail this month, noting that an update to fix the problem will come in September.
An Apple spokesperson also recently told MacNewsWorld that the most current software update -- 2.0.2 -- does address 3G connectivity issues.
Despite these small acknowledgments, Apple hasn't openly described or discussed iPhone 3G connectivity problems. Some customers have reported cases where iPhone 3G devices would not connect to AT&T's 3G networks even in areas where the signal appears strong for other 3G phones. In other user descriptions, the iPhone 3G will switch back and forth between 3G and EDGE signals, and it will drop calls for no apparent reason in areas with generally strong cellular service availability.
Can There Be Too Much Hype?
"We have watched the launch of cell phones over and over for the last 30 years, but this is the first lawsuit I have ever heard of like this one," Jeff Kagan, a telecom industry analyst, told MacNewsWorld.
"This may be the other side of the Apple coin -- so much attention and hype during the last year generates the expectation of perfection," he said, noting that anything having to do with Apple these days is getting loads of attention.
"If Apple can fix the problem, this will all go away. If not, this will drag on for a while," he noted. "But ... this is definitely the first time we have seen this happen in the industry."
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