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Bad apples among new iPhones leave many customers frustrated

iPhone, uDon't-work-so-well.

That was the complaint of several people who returned last week to the sole maintenance service centre of Hutchison Telecom, the head-start operator for Apple in the regional market.

The unhappy iPhone 3G owners had to visit the Mong Kok office in Dundas Street, and nine of them grumbled to the South China Morning Post that their phones had hardware or software defects, and sometimes both.

Problems included a dead spot on the screen, bad reception, a charging problem and a case of SIM-card-detection failure.

To add to their issues, customers remarked that the waiting time was too long for them to have their long-awaited gadgets checked or fixed.

Danny Chow said he bought a defective 16GB handset on Monday and had to replace it. His second one didn't work either.

Mr Chow said his first phone didn't detect a SIM card despite repeated tries and the second phone had a software glitch that failed to activate the SIM card.

A Hutchison Telecom spokeswoman said the service centre had not seen a surge in customers since the iPhone's release.

The office received about 50 to 60 iPhone customers a day last week - but she said 70 per cent of those people simply did not know how to use the phone properly.

Most customers needing help will have to wait 15 to 30 minutes. The spokeswoman said the company needed two to three hours to adequately analyse the phone.

At the service centre last week, Olivia Chow told the Post that her phone had a dead spot on the screen. She was disappointed because a worker said to her that the company would not replace the phone with a new one unless her screen had three or more dead spots.

Anton Wong, an electronics device salesman, said he owned various other Apple products, including an iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod Hi-fi, and had never had a problem - until now.

'I am not sure whether my phone is an exceptional case, but I cannot charge my phone,' he said.

While there are complaints, there are also people who are pleased with the phone.

Richard Windsor, a communications equipment analyst with Nomura Securities, said most reviewers thought the iPhone 3G was a 'significant improvement over the old one'.

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