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Apple Offers Free Cases To Solve iPhone 4 Antenna Problems
Apple just finished their press conference about the iPhone 4 antenna issues that have been widely reported and discussed in the past few weeks. Steve Jobs started by showing that the problem wasn't limited to iPhones, using videos of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the HTC Droid Eris, and the Samsung Omnia 2 as examples, all of which dropped bars while being gripped in certain ways. He said, "This is life in the smartphone world. Phones aren't perfect. It's a challenge for the whole industry. Every phone has weak spots." He went on to say that only 0.55% of all iPhone 4 users have called in to complain about reception problems, and that the return rate on the iPhone 4 so far is less than a third of the return rate for the 3GS. Jobs then said that according to their data, the iPhone 4 drops an average of less than one additional call per hundred than the 3GS. He continued by pointing out that because the 3GS was based on the 3G, there was already a large supply of Bumpers, which most customers left the store with. When the iPhone 4 came out, the old Bumpers didn't fit, so stock was lower and fewer customers used them (80% vs. 20%). Therefore, Apple's solution to the antenna problems is to give a free case to every iPhone 4 purchaser before September 30. Refunds will be offered for those who already purchased one. Since they can't make the Bumpers fast enough, they'll be supplying other cases from third parties. Jobs also acknowledged recently reported problems with the proximity sensor, promising a future software update to fix it. Engadget's liveblog of the conference has a ton of pictures and more direct quotes from Jobs. It's worth looking at if only for pictures of Apple's anechoic testing chambers.
When you put it in perspective and consider the data offered, it is a fairly minor problem.
1) Every phone exhibits signal attenuation to some degree when the hand is placed on/near the antenna assembly, and many can be made to exhibit this same behavior;
2) The dropped call data from ATT shows that the iPhone 4 has performed less than 1 *more* dropped call per 100 calls than the 3GS - an increase, and a sign of a problem, but certainly not in the "IF YOU HAZ IPOHNE 4 U WILL DIEZ" class of problems.
3) 1.7% have been returned so far (about 1/3 the rate for the iPhone 3GS)
4) ~0.5% of the sales have prompted a call to AppleCare about this problem.
5) 3 Million units have been sold so far.
Does this sound like it's a widespread problem where 3 million iPhone 4's are nonfunctional? If all these iPhone 4's were causing call after call after call to drop and just weren't working, the return rate & AppleCare volume would be much higher. Their response is to adjust the signal strength algorithm being used to more accurately reflect the strength of the signal, to offer a free bumper case with each purchase, and to say "if you really find it intolerable, return it for a full refund." If you were following any of the coverage, Steve Jobs actually did offer an apology to "the small number of users affected by this," as well.
What more, realistically, do you expect them to do?
from the WSJ: "[A reporter asks] 'Are you willing to make an apology?' 'You know, most of the customers that have iPhone 4s think it is the coolest thing they ever owned,' says Jobs. To the customers that are having problems 'I apologize to them.'"
They were warned by their own antenna engineer that this was an issue.
http://gizmodo.com/5587815/top-apple-engineer-warned-jobs-about-antenna-problems
I really love it when reading an article and the entire page refreshes every 30 sec and takes me back to the top for a banner. It's becoming really hard to justify not installing ad blocker. I want to support the websites I visit but at this point the ads are just over the line.
And according to Jobs during the Q&A after this announcement, the Bloomberg story (that Gizmodo cites) is bullshit.
In the exact same Q/A an iPhone owner said he couldn't replicate it in the building to which Jobs said that it doesn't really apply to areas with good signal. Like ya know... the Apple Campus. Way to cherry pick. Or do you actually think Apple just made that video up and lied in a verifiable way to the assembled media?
>It kind of bugs me when there's a fairly common problem, and it gets swept up all out of proportion in one particular case. YMMV.
Is it though ? I've never had it on my HTC desire. Assuming every phone has a bad spot where you can reduce signal - okay, I'll bite it makes sense that it would be the case. But that doesn't mean it's the same problem. Apple's problem is they built the phone so that, that bad spot is in an area where the phone is held by LOTS of people ALL the time. Most notably it is directly where most left-handed people will hold the phone making them particularly impacted (and raising the question: did apple not test the device with any left handed users - they ARE 25% odd of the worlds population after all).
Apple's video is unclear here - I can't be utterly sure - but it looks to me like those other phones have to be held quite weirdly to hit the spot. Almost as if the phone designers had made a point to keep the antenna's sensitive areas away from where the user's hand will typically be. Apple on the other hand put it where it directly affects 25% of all people all the time and a significant number of the rest on a regular basis.
If that's the case then this problem IS an apple fault and was NOT overblown.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
But only .5% (not 5 percent, half a percent) of users have even reported the problem.
And how many users comprise .5%?
Based on 3 million iPhone 4's sold, that'd be 15,000.
Go read the anandtech.com articles for a full description of the problem. in short, yes all phones do this, but in the case of the iphone 4 with it's external antenna's it's WAY worse than on any other device
Normal people worry me!
The dB drop when holding it is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than other phones.
The important and telling ratio is [iPhone 4 dropped calls] / [iPhone 3GS dropped calls]. i.e. how many times worse is an iPhone 4 than and iPhone 3GS.
We don't get that number but we do get this other number that lets us draw a graph of how much worse the iPhone 4 is than the 3GS as a function of iPhone 3GS' dropped calls.
I can give you something very close to that number. I have seen figures for call drops from phones on several different networks. Generally the figures I see are somewhat anonymized to indicate only the baseband chipset used by the phone in question (apart from those made by my employer).
- A good phone drops under 1% of calls, when averaged over several million call attempts. The very best phones (which are usually inexpensive feature phones) get about 0.7% calls dropped.
- A decent smartphone drops something around 1.5-2% of calls, over a similar number of call attempts.
- A high-end Smartphone using the Infineon chipset drops around 2.7% of calls. The only such device I know of is the iPhone (3/3GS).
If the iPhone4 is dropping 1% more calls than the iPhone3/3GS, this implies something around 3.5% of calls dropped, which is a very poor result indeed. My employer gets put under a lot of pressure by networks for any device which is worse than 1.5%.
There is some variation in calls dropped by a given phone between different networks. This is a function of network planning, congestion and/or poor cell-site configuration, as well as the measurement methodology (which differs slightly between networks). However, the relative positioning of different devices in the league table doesn't change so much, and the absolute figures are pretty similar as well.
Designing a touchscreen smartphone with good RF performance is a huge challenge. A noisy high-speed apps processor, multiple radios and the presence of a large metal shield over most of the device (i.e. the LCD) are all major problems for designers to overcome. Oftentimes when I look at device teardowns, it is clear that antenna design was a total afterthought. There are a few companies who consistently do a good job in this area: Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola come to mind (HTC are nearly there as well) - almost every product from these is above average in performance. Others are far less consistent in RF performance, although their products may be very shiny!
More anecdotally, my Nokia E71 has a far better ability to hang on to a signal in a poor signal area than my wife's iPhone (3G). Your Mileage Probably Won't Vary (YMPWV?)
AC for reasons which should be obvious.
True, to a point. It's also true that the FCC has a lot of rules about antenna placement in regards to peoples heads, and power issues. I've used the iPhone 4, and when not detuning the antenna due to a bad grip I found the signal strength and call quality to be excellent. Having said that I'll be waiting until Apple silently slipstreams a new version of the iPhone 4 into production before I buy one. All they need to do is put a 2 to 3 mil clear coat on the stainless antenna to solve the bridging issue.
All RF devices with antennas can be adversely affected by environment and one of the worst things for reception is a big bag of contaminated water. Having said that, the iPhone 4 is the only cell phone that I am aware of with an external antenna that can be detuned by bridging the antennas. THe Nexus one can, for example, be made to lose up to 17 dB of signal with the "death grip". The iPhone 4 can lose up to 24 dB with the same grip. This is due to the added degradation by detuning the antenna...
The reality is that a good signal is anything between about -107 and -51 dB, and most phones (iPhone 4 included) work fine down to about -113 dB, below which the call is dropped. Generally speaking, if you are anywhere over -89 dB you won't drop a call with the death grip all other things being equal. If you are less than -89 then you can grip your way to a dropped call.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...