Finnish regulator calls for iPhone refunds Finnish iPhone users unhappy at the inability of the handset to operate below zero are entitled to their money back, even if the limitation appears in the small print. The clarification comes from the Finland's Consumer Agency, as reported by Finnish news agency YLE.fi, in response to numerous questions from concerned Finns …
Don't expect my phones to work below freezing until Hell itself freezes over. And even when that happens, don't expect any warranty coverage anyway, even though my most loyal customer service employees will already be on-site, partnering with Satan to deliver exemplary after-sales customer care.
Sent from my iPho... <signal lost, temperature fell below 0C>
If lot's of people end up getting refunds from whoever they got the phone from in the first place - which I assume to be the mobile carrier -
I rather suspect that said mobile carrier may refuse to do business with Apple in the future....
I agree with some points raised here -
Whether the phone WORKS below 0'C is not the point - the point is whether Apple refuse to honour the warranty because the phone has been taken outside of it's specified operating range.
The second point is "Winters of southern Finland (average day time temperature is below 0 °C/32 °F) are usually 4 months long, and the snow typically covers the land from middle of December to early April." (taken from Wikipedia) clearly if the climate means the phone should not be used outside for 4 months of the year - it is not fit for the purpose for which it was designed.
Clearly Apple could get very smart arsey here and point out that a mobile phone is a portable phone - but there are no guarantees either implied or otherwise about the phones ability to work in an outside environment. But of course that would open a whole new can of worms in that they would effectively be admitting that the iPhone is only built to work in a normal indoor environment.
Guess we just wait and see what magical and well thought response they come out with for this one...... (it could after all be a feature..... to stop you going outside in silly temperatures and either freezing or suffering heat exhaustion........)
We've just gone through a week of -25 days and -33 nights, and I saw lots of people using their iPhones, Androids, Blackberries, and dumb phones outside. My old BB Curve worked fine outside.
I think this is just a get-out-of-warranty-free clause for Apple in case they don't feel like fixing/replacing the phone, and I applaud the Finnish gov't for challenging it.
I remember the consumer ombudsman of Finland in TV program using mobile phones and local climate as a example when no clause in guarantee can get the manufacturer out of hot water, two decades ago. In the same program they explained that a even if a washing machine has a one year guarantee the manufacturer has to repair the machine after it if the fault was cause d by design error. Any design fault within reaconable usage age, abbout 5 years with washing machines.
So if they used mobile phones and freezing weather as a exaple when guarantee clauses are invalid 20 years ago it's no wonder they are saying those clauses are invalid still.
btw. There's a difference of not working in freezing weather, as most LCD:s are prone to slowing down, and breaking, as the norwegian iPhone did. Slowing down is acceptable, breaking isn't. And in Finland consumers expects phone to work when it's freezing.
I don't know about the newer models (Think, anything designed in the 21st century), but my old brick of a Nokia phone with its monochrome LCD and 2+ week standby time really was tough as nails. It's survived everything from being run over by a car, dropped from a third story balcony onto concrete (The casing flew off, but was easily reattached) and dropped in a swimming pool (Continued to work even immediately after immersion, opened up and left to dry inside).
At least some of those old phone designs really were nigh-indestructible.
My current phone is an HTC Magic, which I've been a lot more careful with on account of it costing considerably more than the ~25 euros equivalent I paid for that old Nokia phone back in the day.
Would only that its counterpart here in Sweden would have the courage to do the same ! But alas, our authorities, unlike the Finns, are well-behaved, fully house-broken poodles to US corporations, as demonstrated in the farcicial Pirate Bay trials....
Henri
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