Trouble just keep on going for Apple, but this time they don’t come from Qualcomm, but from angry customers. Some individuals unimpressed by Apple’s marketing tactics decided to sue the company because of the way the iPhones with the “notch” are being sold and presented.
Their argument is that in the promo materials that Apple uses, in which, they claim, Apple tried to hide the fact that some portion of the front of the iPhone X, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max is not actually used by the screen despite the fact that Apple calls this design “all screen” in their materials. Due to this screen “notch”, the claimers mention that the resolution of the screen is affected because of this “notch”, and it is not the advertised screen resolution.
A clear example is the iPhone X, which does not entirely support the 2435×1125 screen resolution because 120 vertical pixels are missing due to the screen “notch”, making the real screen resolution of just 2192×1125, after eliminating the margins, the parts that include the menu bar and parts that apps cannot actually use like the screen edges.
The complaint also mentions other things like the screen size, which measures an effective size of 5.6875 inch instead of 5.8 as Apple advertises, and also a lower pixel density due to the fact that OLED screen use less sub-pixels in comparison with LCD screens.
Now this seem just a little over the edge if you ask me, but beyond the issue with OLED sub-pixel count and estimation of unusable rectangular areas these seem to be valid points if you look at it from the false advertising point of view. With these being said, this lawsuit may not be a total shot in the dark, especially since it raises certain points about marketing, PR and advertising within the entire industry.
The intention of this lawsuit is a “class action” one which means that it will be a battle between lawyers without too much intervention from the claimers. The lawsuit was filed on Friday the 14’th of December 2018 in the US District Court of Northern California.