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To put it a perhaps bit more elegantly, it means that they went through with the design despite knowing it had a reception problem.

It depends upon what constitutes a problem, doesn't it? If having reception less than the best that can be achieved is a problem, then pretty much all modern cell phones have a problem, because the best reception clearly will be with a protruding antenna that won't ever be covered by the user's hand. On the other hand, if Apple's testing found the same thing that independent tests are showing --performance that in the worst case is still as good as their older phones--it is easy to see why they would not recognize that as a problem.

Perhaps, instead of hiring antenna engineers, Apple should have been hiring psychologists to tell them that providing a visual indicator of the worst place to grip the phone is a bad idea, because just as some people can't resist testing the truth of a "wet paint" sign, some people won't be able to resist squeezing the gap.

The tour was for show because it sidestepped the key points. That is,

How with all that testing did they miss the obvious test of just touching the antenna?

When did Jobs say they did? I would imagine that they found that it wasn't that much of a problem. And it wouldn't have been, but for the media (and to some extent, Apple) telling everyone EXACTLY where to touch, and then EVERYONE immediately trying it.

Why did they ignore their internal memos that flagged the issue early on?

Oh, so you're actually SEEN a copy of said "internal memos"? Because I haven't seen them ANYWHERE, and they would have been copied to the ENTIRE internets by now. STFU, fucktard.

If they knew about the issue, why didn't they insulate the antenna to begin with?

Because it wouldn't have helped. Here, read what a REAL antenna expert has to say about "insulation" and GHz-band antenna design. Here's another post after he DID get to do a little informal testing.

BTW, he DID say that, after doing some more extensive tests, the "bumpers" pretty much made the problem disappear.

Hint: Next time try to have some REAL FACTS before you start with your UNINFORMED hate-fest.

The tour was for show because it sidestepped the key points. That is,

How with all that testing did they miss the obvious test of just touching the antenna?

When did Jobs say they did? I would imagine that they found that it wasn't that much of a problem. And it wouldn't have been, but for the media (and to some extent, Apple) telling everyone EXACTLY where to touch, and then EVERYONE immediately trying it.

Why did they ignore their internal memos that flagged the issue early on?

Oh, so you're actually SEEN a copy of said "internal memos"? Because I haven't seen them ANYWHERE, and they would have been copied to the ENTIRE internets by now. STFU, fucktard.

If they knew about the issue, why didn't they insulate the antenna to begin with?

Because it wouldn't have helped. Here, read what a REAL antenna expert has to say about "insulation" and GHz-band antenna design. Here's another post after he DID get to do a little informal testing.

BTW, he DID say that, after doing some more extensive tests, the "bumpers" pretty much made the problem disappear.

Hint: Next time try to have some REAL FACTS before you start with your UNINFORMED hate-fest.

The tour was for show because it sidestepped the key points. That is,

How with all that testing did they miss the obvious test of just touching the antenna?

When did Jobs say they did? I would imagine that they found that it wasn't that much of a problem. And it wouldn't have been, but for the media (and to some extent, Apple) telling everyone EXACTLY where to touch, and then EVERYONE immediately trying it.

Why did they ignore their internal memos that flagged the issue early on?

Oh, so you're actually SEEN a copy of said "internal memos"? Because I haven't seen them ANYWHERE, and they would have been copied to the ENTIRE internets by now. STFU, fucktard.

If they knew about the issue, why didn't they insulate the antenna to begin with?

Because it wouldn't have helped. Here, read what a REAL antenna expert has to say about "insulation" and GHz-band antenna design. Here's another post after he DID get to do a little informal testing.

BTW, he DID say that, after doing some more extensive tests, the "bumpers" pretty much made the problem disappear.

Hint: Next time try to have some REAL FACTS before you start with your UNINFORMED hate-fest.

If they have all these testing facilities and the testing procedure were in fact not flawed, then this problem is not caused by negligence but rather deliberate prioritization (i.e. time to market and/or development costs were more important). It other words, it would mean they really did not "give a shit".

Steve Jobs said explicitly in his press conference that Apple's decision to use an external antenna was part of a design tradeoff to house the phone in a slim case while offering extended battery life. He even acknowledged that there are designs that would provide substantially improved reception, such as an antenna protruding from the case. So Apple tested the reception of the design, and found that no matter how you hold it, performance was similar or better to that of their previous phone, as independent testers have since found, and concluded that Apple's customers would be happy with the design. So far, the phone is selling quite well, and returns are lower than previous models in the line, suggesting that Apple's estimation of its customers' priorities is pretty accurate.

I'm not sure how that translates into not giving a shit.

From http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/6/24/apple-iphone-4-antennas.html

The FCC puts strict limits on the amount of energy from a handheld device that may be absorbed by the body. We call this Specific Absorbtion Rate, or SAR. In the olden days, when I walked ten miles to school in three feet of snow, uphill in both directions, cell phones had pull-up antennas. This allowed the designer to use a half-wave antenna variant, and put the point of maximum radiation somewhat away from the user's cranium. Of course, most people did not think it was necessary and kept the antenna stowed. Motorola's flip phone acutally had a second helical antenna that was switched into place when this was the case. But, more importantly, SAR rules were not yet in effect.

Flip phones became yesterday's style, and phones were becoming more monolithic. Some phones, like the early Treo, kept the antenna in the traditional location at the top of the phone, near one edge, but reduced it to a short stub. Whips became stubs, stubs became bumps, and finally antennas were embedded into the rectangular volume of the phone. The trouble was SAR; if you left the antenna at the top, the user was now pressing it into their head, insuring lots of tissue heating. Enter the bottom-located cellphone antenna.

Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom. This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head. Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won't be the last. The problem is that humans have their hands below their ears, so the most natural position for the hand is covering the antenna. This can't be a good design decision, can it? How can we be stuck with this conundrum? It's the FCC's fault.
You see, when the FCC tests are run, the head is required to be in the vicinity of the phone. But, the hand is not!! And the FCC's tests are not the only tests that must be passed by a candidate product. AT&T has their own requirements for devices put on their network, and antenna efficiency is one of them. I know because I have designed quad-band GSM antennas for the AT&T network. The AT&T test similarly does not require the hand to be on the phone.

So, naturally, the design evolved to meet requirements - and efficient transmission and reception while being held by a human hand are simply not design requirements!

Want phones to continue to get smaller and lighter? This goofy bullshit is what ultimately determines the limit. Don't want phones to continue to get smaller and lighter? Then why are you even reading this thread?

1. Gripping the Naked iPhone 4 certainly had a strong negative effect on the data rates, both upload and download.
2. The effect of the grips on the iPhone 3G is much smaller. But, the Full-Grip still reduces the data rate on upload.
3. Use of the Apple "Bumpers" has a very positive effect on performance. It mitigates much of the effect of the grips at our signal strength level.
4. The iPhone 4 data rates still beat the iPhone 3G data rates under all grip conditions.
5. There was a large spread in the data during the Full-Grip, in both upload and download. This highlights the sensitivity of the antenna design to direct contact by the hand.

If you're in an area of strong signal strength, like the Apple campus, you aren't going to notice it. If you use it in disguise, like the leaked one was, you aren't going to encounter it, since insulating the antenna from the hand solves the problem. If you don't hold it in a certain way, the problem won't happen. Moreover, this sort of thing happens to all phones, to a greater or lesser extent. Hold it in a certain way, and it'll lose signal.

According to Jobs, Apple has multiple testing chambers. More likely, they tried it out, and got results like this
http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/7/14/iphone-4-meets-the-gripofdeathinator.html

And concluded that since, no matter how you hold it, the reception is as good or better than the previous model, it was just fine. What they didn't realize was that the "gap" in the case gave people a visual indicator for the "worst case" grip, and that people would be dismayed to see the signal strength drop when they held it there, even if it was and improvement over the previous model.

So, you might want to read first this article, by a guy who actually does this for a living, to get a feel for the actual issues. Then you might want to read this section of Anandtech's review in which they take several phones -- among them the iPhone 4 -- and do science to them.

The things you'll learn might surprise you: yes, there's loss of signal, but it's not unique to the iPhone 4 (though it does appear to be worse with the iPhone 4). And that's far from the whole story (hint: the iPhone 4's antenna, it turns out, may be better at coping with low signal strength than previous models).

http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/6/24/apple-iphone-4-antennas.html Who would they have fired?

So you acknowledge that aside from your obvious bias against the iPhone, your only evidence for a uniquely severe problem with the new iPhone is an observation that reception is affected by hand position, something that we know just from the basic physics (and a statement by an antenna engineer) must be true to some extent for any phone with an internal antenna.

Any cell phone will show some signal degradation depending upon hand position, because your hand is a bag of salt water and it absorbs RF. So far, nobody has shown that the "hand effect" is any worse with the new iPhone than with any other cell phone with an internal antenna, much less "absolutely disastrous." It may just be that there is a visible cue that makes it easier to figure out what the "worst case" hand position happens to be. Of course, it also means that it is easier to figure out how to hold your phone for best reception when signal strengh is marginal.

While there are certainly people who love everything Apple does, it is obvious from your post and others that there are just as many looking for any excuse to attack Apple.