Chicago (IL) – Next, please: A Long Island resident is suing Apple for not having responded to hairline cracks found in some casings of the iPhone 3G. The new suit adds to previous iPhone complaints over 3G reception issues and false advertising.  

Reports of hairline cracks in the iPhone 3G casing started appearing in August, when iPhone 3G owners described the problem, which seemed to affect the back of the handset, edges and the camera lens, in forum posts on Mac-specific websites. Owners of the $299 16 GB white iPhone model where especially upset since dirt made hairline cracks much more visible than it was the case with the black model.

Apple has not responded to these complaints and apparently decided to remain completely mum on the issue. Long island resident Avi Koschitzki felt that only a legal move could convince Apple to respond and filed suit in a New York district court, seeking class-action status. He accuses AT&T and Apple of deliberately ignoring the issue, although many users reported the problem to the company and wrote about it in the Apple Discussion forum.

"Although Apple was and is aware that the iPhones were and are defective, and that consumers have experienced repeated instances of cracked housing, Apple has nevertheless allowed the defectively designed iPhones to be sold to the public," the filing states.

Koschitzki also blames both Apple and AT&T for false advertising the iPhone 3G as "twice as fast," joining others who also filed lawsuits over false advertising and 3G issues. He repeated allegations from other similar lawsuits that claim the 3G reception issues are caused by excessive power requests, which forces overloaded cell towers to fallback to EDGE, even in metropolitan areas with sufficient 3G coverage.

"Based upon information and belief the 3G iPhones demand too much power from the 3G bandwidths and the AT&T infrastructure is insufficient to handle this overwhelming 3G signal based on the high volume of 3G iPhones it and Apple have sold.”

Also, Koschitzki believes Apple is not addressing a range of software issues in an appropriate and timely manner. His filing states that firmware updates so far failed to patch the 3G reception issue and do not resolve solve a problem with unexpected crashes in some third-party applications.