Mark forgot to include this important newsgroup in the header for his message, so I've taken the liberty to post it over here for your perusal and action: Subject: it's official: iPhone 3G is defective From: Mark Crispin <mrc@panda.com> Newsgroups: alt.cellular.attws,alt.cellular.cingular T-Mobile in Germany joined AT&T and other mobile phone companies in saying that the connective problems with iPhone 3G are due to the iPhone and not their network. This is the latest of a string of bad news for Apple: the flop of MobileMe, overheating iPods in Japan, and the recall of the iPhone 3G power adapters. Now we know what is broken: a chip made by Infineon Technologies (IFX) that is incapable of handling the load placed on it by the iPhone. Apple's recent software upgrade is an attempt to work around the problem. However the problems won't be solved by anything short of replacing the chip, meaning an upgrade to the iPhone 3G hardware. The silver lining on the cloud is that the rest of iPhone 3G's design seems to be sound, and that once the faulty chip is replaced iPhone 3G should have comparable performance to other 3G phones. Meanwhile, iPhone 3G connectivity continues to lag behind competing 3G phones. Verizon Wireless is delightedly beating up on both AT&T and iPhone 3G, with scores of emails to journalists with subjects such as "AT&T's network still suspect" and "iPhone Reception on AT&T's `3G' Network: Static". -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. archived from misc.phone.mobile.iphone