Disclaimer: I have always been anti-Apple, anti-iPhone, anti-iAnything so keep this in mind as you read this.

This post is a little delayed because I have not been on this blog in a while but I wanted to share a little of my experience with my iPhone.  As many of you know, I have been very vocal with my dislike of anything Apple so I took a lot of heat when I bought an iPhone last May.  I did not want to buy an iPhone but as much as I don’t like Apple, I had to admit that I had confidence in the phone lasting.  My last phone was a Blackberry 8900 and it had all kinds of problems and did not last throughout the two year contract.  Since my dad still had the original iPhone and it was working, I thought I would get one just so I would not find myself having to buy another phone before my contract ran out.  I really wanted an Android phone but I did not have any knowledge of a specific model or make, that I could depend on to last the two year contract.

I bought this iPhone 4, a white one in May of 2011 and installed it in an Otterbox case.  From the first day I noticed that every time I would make or receive a phone call, my face would either hang up on the person, put them on hold, face dial numbers, or mute my own microphone.  This has been angering me from the day I brought this phone home.  I tried replacing the case with others of the same model and had the same results.  My wife and son both have the same phone except theirs are black.  They have the same case that I have.  People kept telling me to take the phone back to the AT&T store but I stalled because I have dealt with AT&T before.  I just knew they would blame my case and not admit that the phone had a problem.  Well last weekend my wife finally called AT&T because I have no patience for them.  They transferred her to Apple who kept saying that there is nothing they could do because it had been more than 90 days. My wife insisted and finally got them to agree to look at it.  They made her an appointment to meet at the Apple Store in Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City.

She met them and they agreed that there was something wrong with the sensor on the phone that puts the screen to sleep when it detects that you are holding the phone to your face.  They tried multiple phones, all white and the same thing happened on every one of them.  Since my phone was white, they would only replace it with a white phone.  They finally came to the conclusion that the white iPhone has a problem with the Otterbox case having the clear plastic over the sensor.  Apparently the white color was reflecting the signal back to the plastic.  We finally had to replace the $50.00 case with a Speck case that does not have plastic over the screen.  It seems to have fixed the problem although I really wanted that protection of the screen.

To be honest, my bias against Apple products has not changed.  When my contract runs out, I will be getting an Android phone to replace this iPhone.  I have been very disappointed that the iPhone not only does not have Flash but does not have a native Google Talk app that I can use.  There are third party apps but they do not have the integration with Google Latitude to update location status.  That is a tool that I have found to be very handy over the years.  While the iPhone makes a decent computer, I still do not like it as a phone.  Come to think of it, I have never found a cell phone that can compare in audio quality to a home phone.  Since I have a slight hearing loss on some frequencies, I really struggle being able to hear people on the cell phone. The quality tends to chop and I miss critical pieces of information.  I will always choose the home phone when there is one available. The sound quality is night and day better.  I will never get rid of my home phone and go cell phone only.

The main purpose in this post is to let you know that if you want an Apple iPhone, just be aware that the white one has trouble with the sensor if you use an Otterbox case.  You will find yourself very angry when you keep face dialing.