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Apple Hires Antenna Engineers. Really.
kangsterizer writes "Sometimes, news items are just about a good laugh. You may or may not like Apple, but the way it has been handling its antenna issue has been like a small tech soap opera — Steve Jobs, the CEO, saying 'not to hold the phone that way,' rumors of software issues, and the latest but most crunchy part, since the antenna issue has been widely discovered, on 23 June, several 'antenna engineer' positions opened up at Apple. Seems someone got fired:
Antenna engineer job position 1,
Antenna engineer job position 2,
Antenna engineer job position 3."
I just figure they did all their testing in California, where AT&T dropping calls is as common as $4 coffees.
"If you experience problems with links sending you to the wrong URLs, just don't click on them that way." -Steve Jobs, paraphrased
Living With a Nerd
I just figure they did all their testing in california where AT&T dropping calls is as common as $4 coffees.
Shouldn't they cost more than $4 in Cali?
From a memo to AppleCare reps:
Exact procedures AppleCare reps must follow when dealing with any reception complaints regarding the iPhone 4.:
1. Keep all of the positioning statements in the BN handy – your tone when delivering this information is important.
a. The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. Our testing shows that iPhone 4’s overall antenna performance is better than iPhone 3GS.
b. Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception. This is true of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and many other phones we have tested. It is a fact of life in the wireless world.
c. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand.
d. If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 4, avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.
e. The use of a case or Bumper that is made out of rubber or plastic may improve wireless performance by keeping your hand from directly covering these areas.
2. Do not perform warranty service. Use the positioning above for any customer questions or concerns.
3. Don’t forget YOU STILL NEED to probe and troubleshoot. If a customer calls about their reception while the phone is sitting on a table (not being held) it is not the metal band.
4. ONLY escalate if the issue exists when the phone is not held AND you cannot resolve it.
5. We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.
This space for rent.
That must have been a really, really, really awkward conversation.
Although to be honest, I wonder if this is Apple's secrecy coming to bite them in the ass. If you are uber careful about how many phones you have out in the field, you're a lot less likely to run into scenarios where your product fails in real world situations.
beta testing, google does it for a reason.
Apple's next product announcement will be for special color-matching paperclips ($9.99) and tin cans ($49.99) as antenna boosters.
Specifics? Last time I checked, there is nothing that the iPhone OS can do that Android can't do (and, aside from Android being "open", the reverse is more or less true as well.)
Living With a Nerd
...must be left-handed
OP have you ever used an Android phone? The platform is maturing extremely fast. I just switched from an iPhone 3g to an Evo 4g and I don't have regrets. The features of the iPhone 4 just didn't impress me enough. Plus, once I got an android I realized how much the iPhone was stifling my inner geek. I've loaded custom roms, overclocked, rooted, everything...It has been a lot of fun and I recommend android to any geek I know. And if you're not a geek, I still recommend it.
Ok, I do have ONE regret about my switch: a unified mailbox. There's probably one in the android market...hmmm brb!
Someone got fired, or they just realised that you can't expect it to work properly if you don't hire experts. Reminds me of all the issues with noise in the G5 towers getting onto the supply rails and then into the audio I/O and Firewire power that lead to them hiring analog electronics experts to fix it. When I first read that the stainless steel surround was an antenna, I predicted these kinds of problems - you can't expect an antenna to maintain tuning while allowing a meatbag to touch it, especially when you need to be able to tune several microwave bands from hundreds of MHz to GHz. The laws of physics are against you, and any engineer should be able to point that out. Other handsets have issues where your hand can obstruct the signal, but the iPhone 4 is unique in allowing you to place things in galvanic contact with the antenna, which has a far bigger effect on its RF performance.
Somehow I doubt it was the idea of an antenna designer to put it on the outside where one would hold it. Anyone with any antenna theory knowledge at all knows that your gain would then be changed easily based on how it was held by a conductor (eg, you)
The only think you could blame the antenna engineer for is not properly stating what a bad idea it is.
Heck, it's entirely possible they didn't have any antenna engineers and now realize that's probably idea for a product masquerading as a phone.
So candidate "X": how would you deal with RF absorbtion and detuning of a microwave antenna when brought into close proximity of a human body?
< candidate answers, based on practical experience >
Interviewer writes down answer, says "That's very interesting, next candidate please"
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Hands on experience is required
...Putting the horse behind the cart?
It's a perfectly good solution if you're headed downhill.
Depends which phone you've got. The Nexus One has a great interface and an ever growing list of available software. Plus since Google doesn't banish software from the market for duplicating functionality or allowing people to see naughty things, you can customize things quite a bit more if the interface isn't to your liking.
iPhone noTouch
Most companies have a hard time recruiting any good RF engineering. It's not a 'digital' domain and the Educational System just plain isn't putting out many (any?) good RF engineers anymore. It isn't even something you can passably fake with 'SPICE' like some of the lower-frequency analog.
I doubt if Apple can afford that kind of engineering. They can't even afford mechanical engineers with the skill-set to design a robust replaceable-battery-compartment into their products. (the most recent attempt I can remember is the battery compartment in the Newton, and almost every Newton I have ever seen has a broken battery compartment)
It sounds like they didn't have this problem while they were testing them in cases that look like iPhone 3s. Maybe apple will start shipping them with iPhone 3 cases?
A new meme was born and they saw it was good.
They did the testing with the iPhone 4 inside an iPhone 3GS case... so no one would know what it was.
Clearly the marketing department is the end-all, be-all decision makers in a product design at Apple. As an RF engineer (I am) I would not be jumping up and down to work for Apple. Antenna designs are always a compromise between aesthetics and performance.
I bet that the Apple phone worked just great in their corporate offices with an AT&T cell site right next door. The signal levels would be very high and you probably could have wrapped the phone in a 10 pound ham and the signal would have looked just great. I doubt that they did any real-world testing in a weak signal environment.
Much of the weak-signal specifications for any RF device are usually determined on a test bench or in an anechoic chamber where conditions are controlled. The ugly reality of someone's sweaty, meaty hand seldom makes it into the engineers lexicon.
The job titles for these folks should be "Fall Guy #1, Fall Guy #2 and Fall Guy #3.
Tisha Hayes
a fanboi would probably suggest sucking Steve Jobs' dick as a solution.
I tried that when my new phone starting dropping calls, but he kept telling me "not to hold it that way."
...
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress, try the veal.
Specifics? Last time I checked, there is nothing that the iPhone OS can do that Android can't do (and, aside from Android being "open", the reverse is more or less true as well.)
Does it have [extremely specific game X]? Does it have [extremely specific game Y]? Does it have [extremely specific game Z]? Does it sync with [designed-for-vendor lockin media player A]? No? That sounds pretty useless to me! What do you EXPECT me to do on these phones, anyway?
Now all Apple needs to do is make a commercial with MC Hammer.
"Can't touch this!"
Best part is, they could use the same video - it's already people dancing in front of a white background. Just crank up the contrast until the people turn into silhouettes, and add some headphones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4L4CPfQY8
Someday somebody has to explain to me this phenomenon of these alleged 'dropped calls'. Thing is, I'm in Europe (traveling all about it as part of my job) and I have never (read that again: never) had a dropped call. Not in busy metropolitan area's and not in the rural sticks either.
So what's the deal with GSM in the US? Not enough cell towers? Users walking in and out Faraday cages? What?
Years ago (a decade or more) it used to be that your calls got broken off when entering a tunnel or somesuch. That was annoying so it got fixed.
Maybe it's the healthy dose of competition between carriers overhere?
What do you EXPECT me to do on these phones, anyway?
I expect you to DIE, Mr. Bond.
Living With a Nerd
The iPhone is just smoother. Just last Friday evening I got the chance to compare an iPhone 3GS to my Motorola Milestone (overclocked to 800MHz and tweaked for speed and stability) and an HTC Desire (more or less stock, as far as I could tell)... even with Launcher Pro and Sense UI on the Milestone and Desire, respectively, the iPhone just felt... nicer.
The scrolling, pinching, app-switching animations, hell, even the lockscreens... all smoother and more responsive on the iPhone.
Of course, that's not important to everyone (definitlely won't be swaying me any time soon), but many people will go with the iPhone on this basis alone, because they assume it signifies that everything else about the iPhone will be better as well...
A good guess, actually, because when you're doing FCC testing, you pretty much use an instrumented RF chamber to gather field data. You can't have people in it for obvious reasons.
Even in real world testing, you might not find it - after all, once this hit, people have tried to replicate the result, failed, then watched a dozen YouTube videos seeing how to replicate it. After seeing them, they have to purposely set their hands in one position. Other people, trying to see the effect, have dropped their phones. It really depends how you hold the phone - some people like ot hold the bottom and use leverage to hold it to their ear (results in problem - you have to "cup" the bottom), others hold the top and press their hands to their ear. The latter, except for those with the right hand geometry, probably can't figure out how to do it.
Hell, I've seen phones where the radio locks up if you do *just* the right set of motions. One of my coworkers spent a week riding the commuter train with a phone, laptop, and debug hardware because that was the only reliable way to reproduce the issue. And you have 5 minutes because it happens in just one particular part, then you get off and have to ride it the other way to set up for the next round of debugging.
For phone testing, there's tons of issues a limited testing won't find. The only way you'll find them is well, release it to the public
Plus, once I got an android I realized how much the iPhone was stifling my inner geek. I've loaded custom roms, overclocked, rooted, everything..
so you just did not even try this on the iPhone? You have been able to do ALL of these for longer than andriod phones have existed.
Dont make crap up like you cant do this on an Iphone, Jailbrake and root an iphone for some serious fun... Hell one dude has Linux running on the iphone. http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/
http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/overclock-your-jailbroken-iphone-or-ipod-touch/
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Disclaimer: I am an engineer (electrical test, in fact) so I'm a bit biased. But from the brief insights that we can get about the Apple development process, Jobs loves to keep different parts of the organization completely oblivious from each other. My guess is that the actual antenna engineers never had knowledge of the final design of the phone. The process guys designing the machining to make the external antenna probably didn't know they were making antennas. The only people that probably knew the whole picture was Jobs, Ive, and the usual group that is in that iPhone 4 video shown during the keynote.
If statistically it is shown to be a huge problem as such to trigger a recall, the board should do its job and hold one someone in this high level team responsible. Obviously, it is a cultural thing with Jobs. He loves to get feedback of what is possible from the engineering staff and then ignore it. For example, the Mac Mini. He famously asked what was the smallest computer they could build at the time. He got feedback and then said make it 1" smaller in each dimension. Sometimes it works. I have done some of my best work for people who were similar, just unflinching in their demands. It is gratifying to complete such a project. However, this time taking industrial design over engineering backfired, and big time. Apple has been inching towards this day for a long time. For example, why no strain relief on the old Macbook MagSafe connectors? Aluminum backs on the original iPhone? I'm hopeful that this episode shakes up the culture and process a little bit. Enough to be cautious when necessary, but not to stifle their crazy industrial design creativity either.
The primary difference is that you don't have to give up your warranty to do it on Android.
We already had this discussion here, folks...don't use "just hack the device" as support for an iPhone when you can do the same thing with an unmodified Android device. I'm all for modifying my gadgets, but not when I can buy a gadget that does what I want right out of the box.
Living With a Nerd
BP is now hiring drilling engineers. There's never enough money to do it right the first time but there's always money to try to fix it the second time.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Ok, I do have ONE regret about my switch: a unified mailbox. There's probably one in the android market...hmmm brb!
If you find one, let me know. I am a long time BlackBerry user, and would love an Android phone but it's just not as tightly wound as the BB platform is, especially with the messaging boxes as you said. I love the ability to click "messages" and see anything that's gone on from IM to calls to emails, in one list. A phone needs to save me time first, and be a cool gadget second.
They probably didn't bother with any engineers for it. I would guess that in their phones they normally use off-the-shelf antenna designs. So I could see that they have no need for an engineering department. Also, when it comes to antennas for cell signals, there are some pretty well established designs/rules to use.
So my bet is that the marketers started going wild. They figured it'd look at really cool if the phone was all glass, thin, with the antenna as a metal band running around it. That layout for antenna was generally ok, so a prototype was built. It was tested sitting on a desk, and worked fine. Things moved forward. However all testing was done in non-real circumstances, either sitting on a bench in a lab or using disguised prototypes, that didn't have the same structure as the final thing. Everything looked good, product launched, shit hit the fan.
At no time was an actual engineer in this area consulted.
I would say this is the most likely scenario. Not that there was some dumbass engineer that didn't know or whatever, but that there was NO engineer, that nobody with antenna design expertise was ever consulted. It was done because it looked cool, without proper thought given to all the functional constraints. A marketing decision, not an engineering one. Now, given the problems, they are hiring engineers to try and keep it from happening again.
Considering with subscription your iPhone costs like 7-800$ and that you can buy a rubber "bumper" case on ebay from china for like 1$ or 2$ bucks, you would think they would be just throwing those things at customers!
Of course they probably would view this as conceding that a problem actually exists...
INTERVIEWER: "So you want the Antenna Engineer position?"
GUY: "Yes."
INTERVIEWER: "And you've heard what Stave jobs had to day on the subject?"
GUY: "That people with problems shouldn't hold their phone that way?"
INTERVIEWER: [winces] "Yeah, that. He didn't put it exactly that way. What -- what do you think about Mr. Jobs' response?"
GUY: "I don't agree."
INTERVIEWER: "What?"
GUY: "...with the, um, consumers who think that idea isn't correct." [smiles]
INTERVIEWER: "And what do you think would fix the problem?"
GUY: "I would show people the correct way to hold the phone?"
INTERVIEWER: [scribbles note on clipboard] "Thank you. You'll be hearing from us."
GUY LEAVES
INTERVIEWER: [picks up iPhone and dials] "Damn it" [adjusts grip] "This is Steve. We've interviewed one hundred engineers and ninety of them agree with Steve. Print the ad."
Less of a guess than from experience doing a little testing myself.
Sometimes people do the unexpected.
A software example happened to my company many years ago.
This was back in the DOS days.
Our software had a file manager. There was a function to copy the file to the floppy and from the floppy.
We where getting complaints that files where "unediting" themselves. This was actually impossible with the file structure we where using. We zeroed out the free sections of the file to help prevent curruption.
Well the keyboard commands where crtl f crtl f to copy from the floppy and ctrl f ctrl t to copy to the foppy.
We finally figured out that some people thought that they had to hit the ctrl f and t all at the same time.
They where holding the f down long enough for the auto repeat to cause them to copy from the floppy and they never noticed the message.
We "fixed" the issue by changing the hot keys in later versions and by adding a lot more warnings if you tried to copy an old file over a new file.
Just figuring out what caused the unediting was a challenge since the support was all phone based.
It is hard to make things easy.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Jobs said let there be the iPhone 4 and there was the iPhone 4 and Jobs saw the iPhone 4 and said it was good. Then he sent them forth to multiply.
But he never actually held it and made a call with it. That was the problem.
Brian Klug and Anand Lal Shimpi on iPhone 4 antenna
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Quite clearly, the Android DIDN'T do what the GP want right out of the box, as evidenced by the overclocking, rooting, loading custom roms, etc. This is neither a hit against Android nor iPhone - practically every device needs some degree of customization to make it fit a particular user's needs.
I'm not sure where you're coming from on the jailbreaking-terminates-your-warranty thing either. The sequence of events goes like this: 1) jailbreak 2) discover problems 3) restore to factory settings 4) get warranty service 5) jailbreak again.
I agree that Apple's control freakery over the iPhone is a bad thing. But you certainly can achieve all the same geeky stuff on an iPhone that you can on Android, which requires only a jailbreak, and that's really not that hard.
Not if your cart has brakes. I mean, give the poor horse a break!
Free Martian Whores!