Donald LeBuhn, a California resident, has decided to sue Apple over what he feels is incorrect advertising on the company"s part. Apple"s iPhone website markets the glass the iPhone 4 is made out of as "20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic," going so far as to label the glass "ultradurable." After dropping his phone three feet, LeBuhn is beginning to think otherwise.
Allegedly, LeBuhn paid $252 in September for a new iPhone 4; a mere three weeks later, his daughter accidentally dropped his phone when sending an SMS, causing the phone"s glass to shatter. LeBuhn is claiming that his iPhone 3GS never received that kind of damage when dropped from similar heights.
He isn"t alone. Back in October, Neowin reported that iPhone 4 owners were seeing 82% more screen breaks than previous iterations of the device. The study behind that article was conducted on more than 20,000 iPhones and, in fact, found that more than 15% of people who buy the iPhone 4 will experience an accident within the first year of owning the device. The analysis may have been a little startling, but it, combined with Apple"s Antennagate issues, didn"t stop people from buying the much-coveted device. Apple announced its best quarter ever recently, having sold 16.24 million iPhones in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2011.
Now LeBuhn is challenging Apple by stating that their website"s claim is just a lot of false PR. In his lawsuit, LeBuhn says "...Apple has failed to warn and continues to sell this product with no warning to customers that the glass housing is defective." According to LA Weekly, he is asking Apple to pay back all of the customers in the class action lawsuit; he wants the company to reimburse customers who have paid for glass repairs and replacements, to refund customers" purchases of the iPhone 4, and to make any other amends.
Image credit: Luiz Machado via Flickr