A class action lawsuit filed this week claims that a design flaw in the glass used in the iPhone 4 leads to it easily breaking under “normal use.” Donald LeBuhn said that his daughter dropped his iPhone 4 from about three feet off the ground, causing the glass to crack. He added that his previous iPhone, the 3GS model, never suffered such damage when dropped from similar heights.
LA Weekly noted that warranty provider SquareTrade took a look at 20,000 iPhone accidents last fall and found that accident rates and incidents of broken screens for the iPhone 4 were higher — 68% and 82%, respectively — than for the 3GS.
Mr. LeBuhn’s lawsuit opens with several marketing statements Apple has made about the iPhone 4’s glass screen — “20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic,” “ultradurable” and “glass used in helicopters and high-speed trains” — and then goes on to say: “Months after selling millions of iPhone 4s, Apple has failed to warn and continues to sell this product with no warning to customers that the glass housing is defective.”
The lawsuit asks Apple to refund the iPhone 4 purchase price to all consumers covered by it, to reimburse them for repair costs, and to make good on “their overpayment in purchasing defective iPhone 4s.”