Proximity sensor woes caused by reflective ear canal

Mac "geniuses" are anything but.

I never experienced anything on my 3gs -- nor did we ever HEAR about this problem from others -- so I would be comfortable questioning the Genius' explanation as it would apply to previous generations as well. Doesn't that make perfect, logical sense??

While I was at work inside a temperature-controlled building with my naked 4G (no cover, nothing), I was on a call when all of a sudden I stopped hearing any replies -- and then suddenly heard RINGING (through the speaker, as if I had made another call). Not knowing what the heck happened, I moved the phone away and looked at the screen -- and was completely dumbfounded to see that I had, without hands, put my original call on hold and somehow dialed an old neighbor!!

That's the only time I've had a problem, but it certainly shook my confidence in the phone a little!

My iPhone 4 had "morning wood" this morning when I took it out of it's charging dock. Has anyone else experienced this?

I am glad that this story broke. Because you see...I too have suffer from cheeking.

I suppose that I shouldn't talk when I'm on the phone. It seems my cheeks press random buttons (audible tones) and then disconnect me.

Ahh...the benefits of being early adopting.....

Guys (n gals)!

Just got an email from Steve Jobs about this issue.
Acctually it is not an issue with the phone. Those who experience the problem is holding the phone in a non Apple approved way.

Sorry, you need to change your phone habits and adjust to the real way of using iPhones!

Have a picture of how to hold it but must have missplaced it... It was something about holding it with two righthand fingers against your forehead... well you all get the picture :)

Considering my experience with industrial IR sensors I think I know what the Apple rep was trying to say. It isn't the an issue of mirrors but rather the lack of a surface normal to the IR sensor to reflect the light strongly. As the good doctor described earlier there isn't a straight shot to a reflective surface, in fact it is just the opposite as the canal would tend to attenuate reflections significantly.

As to iOS I have to agree with many others here, there are significant issues, bugs, in iOS 4. The performance is really poor on my 3G but I'm not convinced it is totally a hardware issue. There is enough strangeness for me to think the software has a lot if bugs.

This is one of the reasons I don't discount Apples coming software fixes. My 3G has networking issues I've never seen before 4.0. I can't blameAT&T here as the issues started to show up right after installing 4.0. So I'm not going to blame the 4G iPhone hardware for all the issues that float about the net. To put it plainly Apple hasn't tried hard enough with iOS 4.

The mess that is iOS 4.0 has me thinking that it might be awhile before Apple roles out the next software rev. There are to many intertwined issues for one little fix to solve.

This happens to me a little too often. I need to stop making excuses for this phone and bring it back.

I'm sorry. I am a very, very loyal mac customer. And an apple stock holder. And the proximity sensor problem is real and AWFUL. I hang up on calls all the time. I did not have this problem with either my original 2g phone or the 3gs.

THIS THING NEEDS TO GET FIXED OR IT WILL ACTUALLY BRICK THE PHONE FOR ME ... meaning: returning if I can get Apple to take it back and moving on to some other phone.

How does any of this explain how my 3GS started doing this when I upgraded to IOS 4.0?

I suspect that Apple will need to use AT&T's more accurate formula for calculating the distance from your head.

I believe the issue is tempature related. Today my phone went dark (dimmed). And would not return to normal britness until I could cool the phone down. Which I did after getting tempature warning soon after.