Consumer Reports: Purple haze not an iPhone 5 issue

Consumer Reports is defending its positive review of the iPhone 5, saying the recent flare-up about the device’s camera is an issue common across many smartphones.

Every new iPhone launch has to be greeted with some sort of crisis or wannabe crisis from the anti-Apple crowd. With the iPhone 4, it was the very real issue of “antennagate.”

With the iPhone 4S, it was the misleading “4G” icon that started popping up on phones that did not have a true 4G connection. And with the iPhone 5, the latest thing is the issue of this “purple haze” that appears when taking photos or video.

Consumer Reports praised the iPhone 5, notably mentioning how powerful the camera was, and after this haze thing came to light (no pun intended), many wondered if it would comment.

It has indeed, but instead of withdrawing its positive review of the phone, it is defending its stance and writing off the haze problem as something that is not unique to the iPhone 5.

“In our tests, the phone’s camera did indeed display such a haze when we shot into a bright light source in our labs,” Consumer Reports admitted.

“But it didn’t do so in any more pronounced a fashion than did the iPhone 4S or two Android-based smart phones, the Samsung Galaxy S III and Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, when we tested those under the same conditions. In the course of our tests, the haze was sometimes purple, but sometimes another color or even a rainbow,” the watchdog group concluded.