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.

Comments

How would I demo this?

[jc42]

The Steve is quoted as saying "This is life in the smartphone world. Phones aren't perfect. It's a challenge for the whole industry. Every phone has weak spots."

Naturally, I wanted to test this. So I pulled out my G!, and tried holding it in various ways. I'd seen the iPhone videos, where the signal-strength "bars" fell slowly, dropping by 1 every 5 or 10 seconds, so when I tested a grip, I held it for about 30 sec. My signal strength started at 3 (of 4) bars. I found that no matter how I held it, the indicated strength never fell below 3 bars. For a while, it went to 4, so I re-tested the previous couple of grips, but it stayed at 4 bars. After a while, it fell back to 3 bars and stayed there, and when I retested the previous (3-bar) grips, they all showed 4 bars.

Conclusion: I couldn't find the grip that makes a G1 lose the signal. I even tried completely surrounding the phone with both hands, and holding it completely covered against my chest, but nothing I tried had any visible effect.

So what's the "weak spot" grip of the G1, which Steve says exists? Anyone know?

A bit of googling, but didn't find the grip. I did find a few comments about sporadic reboots during calls, which of course will lose the call, but I haven't seen that.

It could be interesting to collect such info about lots of models of phones and put them online. Just reading assertions made by a vendor in a press conference isn't really all that useful for product comparison purposes.