Following its widely publicized decision earlier this week to say it could not recommend Apple’s iPhone 4 because of signal-strength problems, Consumer Reports is not backing down. On Tuesday, the nonprofit organization again posted that “it’s the company’s responsibility to provide the fix — at no extra cost to consumers.”
CR added that Apple has an obligation “to offer a product that works consistently and reliably out of the box.” Apple has said that users should try to avoid holding their iPhone 4 so that the antenna signal is weakened, or they might buy a $30 case to shield the device.
Recall Costing $1.5 Billion?
But the problem isn’t going away for Apple. Its stock price dropped about two percent on Tuesday, and a variety of industry observers have raised the possibility of the company issuing a product recall.
One analyst, Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research, speculated that a full product recall could cost Apple as much as $1.5 billion.
In a posting on its Electronics Blog on Monday, Consumer Reports had said it could not recommend the popular device because it has a signal reception problem.
“It’s official,” the posting by the organization’s Mike Gitas said. “Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception.”
Gitas said when a finger or hand touches a spot on the lower left side of the device, “the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal.” Because of this, he wrote, Consumer Reports “can’t recommend the iPhone 4.”
Consumer Reports noted that a piece of duct tape or “other thick, non-conducive material” over the antenna gap fixes the problem. Gitas noted that the engineers’ conclusion was reached after testing three different iPhone 4s, which…