The Daily Mail reported this morning than an iPhone 4 recall is underway, but don’t believe it; the UK publication’s source was a tweet from a fake Steve Jobs Twitter account.
Apple hasn’t announced any plans to recall its new phone. The Twitter account @ceoSteveJobs is a parody account — it says so in the profile bio, and even if you don’t read the bio, it should be obvious from the tweets, which include lines like “Be careful not to leave your #iPhone4 at the Genius Bar on the way out of the store.
Gizmodo might pick it up,” and “I heard the CEO of AT&T got married recently. The service was great but the reception was terrible.” The Daily Mail has pulled the original story, which began with a claim that a recall was coming and a quote from the fake Twitter account, and then continued to explain the issues users have had with signal loss when the iPhone 4 is held a certain way.
It’s hard to imagine that Apple didn’t know about the signal issue. The engineers at the company probably decided it was a worthwhile trade-off for otherwise improved reception, so don’t expect a recall for that reason. Though you might be surprised that The Daily Mail ran a story based on a tweet from an account that is so obviously fake, it’s not the first time something like this has happened. That’s why Twitter implemented a system for verifying the accounts of important people and publications.
