iPhone 4 flaw origins revealed by insiders

Apple won't be recalling the iPhone 4 at its event tomorrow, a slip has revealed tonight. While the source didn't rule out free cases or that a fixed version was coming, Apple isn't expected to require that customers replace their existing phones for new ones. The WSJ didn't have insights as to what the focus of the impromptu press conference would be other than the reception problem.

However, the sources elaborated on Apple's advance knowledge of the problem and now suggest that systemic flaws in Apple's testing process resulted in the current criticisms. Jobs' decision to go ahead with the design was prompted by a love of the shape that overrode engineers' complaints, as revealed earlier, but the inability to catch problems came due to Apple's extremely secretive nature, the sources said.

As evidenced in the lost iPhone 4 prototype, Apple's insistence on using disguise cases and other tricks to hide the final form prevented engineers and others from actually holding the bare phone and unintentionally blocking the signal. Also, Apple reportedly not only gave carriers fewer phones to test than they expect from other companies but cut short the time they had to test in order to make the June 24 ship date.

For its part, Apple has already denied the earlier claims and insisted that claims of engineers being ignored were false.

"We challenge Bloomberg BusinessWeek to produce anything beyond rumors to back this up," a spokesperson said of the earlier rumor. "It's simply not true."

By Electronista Staff