No end in sight for Apple's iPhone 3G woes

Over the past few days, a series of reports have been turning up of 3G iPhone users complaining that the signal on their device is a bit, well, crap – dropped calls particularly during handoff between two networks and poor 3G coverage.

The Infineon chipsets seems to be tipped as the problem by a number of reports, like this one from this one from USA Today. One analyst told the FT: We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier. This is not surprising as the Infineon 3G chipset solution has never really been tested in the hands of users.”

The good news is that a firmware update – which could potentially fix the problem – is rumoured to be coming soon. The bad news: the problem could well be outside what a firmware update will be able to fix. The upshot: a lot of grumpy iPhone users and more than a few people scratching their head as to how Apple could allow a product to be released when it still has such a major flaw.