stman
07-16-2010, 12:42 PM
Larry Knowles
AOL News
(July 16) -- Sam Gaddis was about to listen to voice mail on his iPhone 4 recently when a vaguely familiar voice came on the line.
"Hello?" the woman asked. A confused Gaddis glanced at his phone only to gasp in dismay – his iPhone had inadvertently dialed up an ex-girlfriend from his contact list.
"All of a sudden, it's this girl," Gaddis, 25, recounted to AOL News. "I looked at the screen and see it's someone that I dated in college. I couldn't hang up, because I knew she probably had me on caller ID."
An iPhone 4
Ming Yeung, Getty Images
Many people lined up to buy the iPhone 4 in June, like these people in London, but some got more than they expected with the new device: erratic, and often embarrassing, calling behavior.
Mortified, Gaddis played off the call as an attempt to reconnect with an old flame. "'I just wanted to kinda see what you're up to,'" he recalled saying.
And so they chatted – she was seeing someone; he was developing an iPhone app – for what he characterized as "three minutes of utter awkwardness."
Gaddis' story isn't unique, as iPhone 4 users the world over have reported erratic, and often embarrassing, calling behavior when the device is pressed to the cheek. There's even a name for it: "facedialing."
With issues that include random dialing, hang-ups (the telephonic kind), and muting, even the most stoic and self-assured of iPhone 4 users are appearing to friends and associates as dithering, obsessive head cases.
So pervasive is the randomness that a discussion thread among frustrated owners on the Apple.com iPhone 4 support page runs a staggering 104 pages. The consensus among posters is that the phone's proximity sensor is too, well, sensitive, and activates the touch screen when it should really just chill out.
Richard Alvarez, another iPhone 4 owner, isn't a lunatic, but he sounded like one a few days ago. The youth soccer coach from Tucson, Ariz., was venting about a referee during a call to a friend when he heard, "Uh, Rich, this isn't who you think it is..." Turns out, his phone had hung up on his friend and dialed a client from his day job.
"It was a little embarrassing," Alvarez told AOL News. "They heard some conversation that they probably shouldn't have heard. I threw out a few four-letter words."
Luckily, the client held referees in equally low esteem. "I just told him, 'My cheek must have called you,'" Alvarez added.
While some people can afford to sound unhinged, for others, it's bad business. And to Aneil Mishra, a professor at the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University, nothing is more odious than bad business.
Mishra was walking down the stairs while listening to his voice mail late one night when his iPhone 4 took it upon itself to call his boss. Though Mishra hung up before anyone could answer, he still worried what the boss would think upon checking his phone the next morning.
"I'm meeting with him at 5:00 today," Mishra said in a phone interview. "And now I have to explain why I was calling him at 12:47 in the morning."
In another incident, Mishra hung up on a nurse from his doctor's office – behavior unbecoming of an academic. "It's embarrassing," he said of all the facedialing. "In one conversation, four separate things went wrong, maybe more."
At least random dialing conveys an attempt to communicate. Another prevalent issue, random muting, makes iPhone 4 owners seem disinterested and aloof – not good for all the men in relationships out there. Indeed, several men interviewed for this article report the iPhone 4 has exhibited typical male behavior, often clamming up and tuning out girlfriends and wives.
Greg Welch, an iPhone 4 owner and computer science professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was on the phone with his wife when he heard incessant dog barking on the other end of the line. He asked his wife why a dog would be in their kitchen, but she continued talking.
A minute later there was a long silence. "Greg, are you there?" she asked. "Are you listening to me?"
"Yes," he replied, but she hung up in a huff.
As it happens, the iPhone 4 had muted the call, then ventured into his contacts and chosen a lovely barking ring tone for his wife. The beleaguered husband called his wife back and tried to explain, but, well, ... men.
"She was annoyed because I ignored her," Welch said in a phone interview with AOL News. "She thought I was just being my normal, callous, inattentive self."
Apple reported selling 1.4 million units in the first three days of the iPhone 4's release on June 24, an indication that a lot of people's lives have suddenly become a lot more bizarre.
Despite the clamor among users, however, Apple has yet to acknowledge a problem with the proximity sensor, and Apple representatives did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
The iPhone 4's sensor issue shouldn't be confused with its well-publicized reception issue, for which The Wall Street Journal is reporting a possible product recall. And if a recall occurs, millions of people will return to their old stable and reliable selves.
With iPhone 4 sales remaining brisk, however, those in the market for one of Apple's serendipitous machines would do well to remember the phone's prescient slogan: "This changes everything."
Yes, it does.
/http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/iphone-4-problems-owners-report-random-dialing-hang-ups-muting-and-facedialing/19556328
AOL News
(July 16) -- Sam Gaddis was about to listen to voice mail on his iPhone 4 recently when a vaguely familiar voice came on the line.
"Hello?" the woman asked. A confused Gaddis glanced at his phone only to gasp in dismay – his iPhone had inadvertently dialed up an ex-girlfriend from his contact list.
"All of a sudden, it's this girl," Gaddis, 25, recounted to AOL News. "I looked at the screen and see it's someone that I dated in college. I couldn't hang up, because I knew she probably had me on caller ID."
An iPhone 4
Ming Yeung, Getty Images
Many people lined up to buy the iPhone 4 in June, like these people in London, but some got more than they expected with the new device: erratic, and often embarrassing, calling behavior.
Mortified, Gaddis played off the call as an attempt to reconnect with an old flame. "'I just wanted to kinda see what you're up to,'" he recalled saying.
And so they chatted – she was seeing someone; he was developing an iPhone app – for what he characterized as "three minutes of utter awkwardness."
Gaddis' story isn't unique, as iPhone 4 users the world over have reported erratic, and often embarrassing, calling behavior when the device is pressed to the cheek. There's even a name for it: "facedialing."
With issues that include random dialing, hang-ups (the telephonic kind), and muting, even the most stoic and self-assured of iPhone 4 users are appearing to friends and associates as dithering, obsessive head cases.
So pervasive is the randomness that a discussion thread among frustrated owners on the Apple.com iPhone 4 support page runs a staggering 104 pages. The consensus among posters is that the phone's proximity sensor is too, well, sensitive, and activates the touch screen when it should really just chill out.
Richard Alvarez, another iPhone 4 owner, isn't a lunatic, but he sounded like one a few days ago. The youth soccer coach from Tucson, Ariz., was venting about a referee during a call to a friend when he heard, "Uh, Rich, this isn't who you think it is..." Turns out, his phone had hung up on his friend and dialed a client from his day job.
"It was a little embarrassing," Alvarez told AOL News. "They heard some conversation that they probably shouldn't have heard. I threw out a few four-letter words."
Luckily, the client held referees in equally low esteem. "I just told him, 'My cheek must have called you,'" Alvarez added.
While some people can afford to sound unhinged, for others, it's bad business. And to Aneil Mishra, a professor at the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University, nothing is more odious than bad business.
Mishra was walking down the stairs while listening to his voice mail late one night when his iPhone 4 took it upon itself to call his boss. Though Mishra hung up before anyone could answer, he still worried what the boss would think upon checking his phone the next morning.
"I'm meeting with him at 5:00 today," Mishra said in a phone interview. "And now I have to explain why I was calling him at 12:47 in the morning."
In another incident, Mishra hung up on a nurse from his doctor's office – behavior unbecoming of an academic. "It's embarrassing," he said of all the facedialing. "In one conversation, four separate things went wrong, maybe more."
At least random dialing conveys an attempt to communicate. Another prevalent issue, random muting, makes iPhone 4 owners seem disinterested and aloof – not good for all the men in relationships out there. Indeed, several men interviewed for this article report the iPhone 4 has exhibited typical male behavior, often clamming up and tuning out girlfriends and wives.
Greg Welch, an iPhone 4 owner and computer science professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was on the phone with his wife when he heard incessant dog barking on the other end of the line. He asked his wife why a dog would be in their kitchen, but she continued talking.
A minute later there was a long silence. "Greg, are you there?" she asked. "Are you listening to me?"
"Yes," he replied, but she hung up in a huff.
As it happens, the iPhone 4 had muted the call, then ventured into his contacts and chosen a lovely barking ring tone for his wife. The beleaguered husband called his wife back and tried to explain, but, well, ... men.
"She was annoyed because I ignored her," Welch said in a phone interview with AOL News. "She thought I was just being my normal, callous, inattentive self."
Apple reported selling 1.4 million units in the first three days of the iPhone 4's release on June 24, an indication that a lot of people's lives have suddenly become a lot more bizarre.
Despite the clamor among users, however, Apple has yet to acknowledge a problem with the proximity sensor, and Apple representatives did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
The iPhone 4's sensor issue shouldn't be confused with its well-publicized reception issue, for which The Wall Street Journal is reporting a possible product recall. And if a recall occurs, millions of people will return to their old stable and reliable selves.
With iPhone 4 sales remaining brisk, however, those in the market for one of Apple's serendipitous machines would do well to remember the phone's prescient slogan: "This changes everything."
Yes, it does.
/http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/iphone-4-problems-owners-report-random-dialing-hang-ups-muting-and-facedialing/19556328