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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.
3GS: 99.2% of calls dropped
4: 99.9% of calls dropped
So a very low increase percentage-wise... ;-)
It kind of bugs me when people admit they have done something wrong but because other people also have problems then it is not that bad. Wonder what Jobs would say if there was a coding error in OS X? Doesn't matter 'cos MS do it all the time? It's the normalisation of mediocrity.
No, it's about pointing out media sensationalism.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm an Apple customer, and I do not like being treated like an idiot."
thats how they sell so much overpriced/overhyped sh*t
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I'm calling shenanigans on this one...
Months of testing is done on every device before it goes out the door. Then it undergoes months of testing with the carrier. Then it gets released to the public.
This was a known flaw.
Of course, their anechoic chambers are beautiful! A beautiful way to make Consumer Reports look like amateurs.
There's so much spin going on, I can't express how flabbergasted I am!
And to point the finger at other people. C'mon!!
That's just childish and petty. Accountability should be SOP for any business. When Toyota had their accelration problems, they did the same run around. Pointing fingers at anything but the actual issue, and it's still happening.
Any company that treats it's customers like this doesn't deserve the customers it has.
That goes for ANY company.
Arrgghh!!
These CEOs are the rolemodels for tomorrows graduating MBAs.
We truly are doomed.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
>What more, realistically, do you expect them to do?
I for one expect them to produce free software or no software and until they day they do - I will never buy any of their products. By the same taken I do not buy (or otherwise obtain or use) anything made by Microsoft or Adobe (indeed - my computers do NOT have flash installed).
Gimme the code, lemme hack it - you may win me over.
More importantly - iphone is a fad. There are two major schools of thought in UI design. School 1 is - make it impossible for hte user to do something wrong. In practise it means removing features, disabling options and preventing customization. Advantage: low initial learning curve. Disadvantage: it sucks - very very soon - specifically the very first time you ever want to do something the designer didn't think you would want to.
The other school of thought is: make everything as customizable as possible, maybe even up to and including the very source code but at least offer every option you can think off. Disadvantage: marginally higher initial learning curve (which basically goes away if you ship with sane defaults and smart initial autoconfigs though). Advantage: tool remains usable even as the user's needs get more specialised and advanced. The user can adapt the workflow to his personal style rather than the otehr way around leading to a more intuitive final result (because people are unique -there is NOTHING beyond a nipple that's intuitive to more than one person).
Things that try approach one: Apple OSX, Windows (mostly), Gnome (I will never forgive them for removing the option for ANYBODY to do double-sided printing because "too many people would never need that"), Iphone, MS-Paint
Things that try approach two: KDE, Android, Google (in general), Linux (below the desktop level), gimp and photoshop*
Software of the second variety tend to fall behind in the short term then gradually surpass and exceed the popularity of the first variety - because it's simply a much better model.
As Torvalds said - if you treat your users like idiots, very soon only idiots are your users.
*Note that for this second part of the post I was rating popularity and long-term success of these schools of thought and not considering issues of software freedom. Those issues are still highest priority for me, but I couldn't fairly compare the real-world success of the models if I left OUT the proprietary software.
Apple and the iPhone is firmly wedged in the former camp - it's a wonderful short-term strategy but the only POSSIBLE outcome in the medium to long term is that it WILL come back to bite them in the ass and iphone will, like mac, become relegated to a tiny minority of the market who are either too fanboiyish to consider something else - or fits the apple demographic so perfectly that none of the million things it cannot (ever) do is something they really need.
So - if apple ever wants my custom - they will need to change that model AND make their software FSF level free. Till then I'll use my customized android thanks - it's a free as I can get right now. Even if they don't care about me, the design model if not changed will still end up destroying the market share they have. This is just the first step - Jobs is learning that the iphone has moved way outside the fanboi world - real users don't just "do what king Jobs says they should".
It's going to be very interesting for Apple from here on in.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Considering he demonstrated the exact same effect with HTC and Nokia phones live this morning, I would say the problem was pretty clearly not isolated to the iPhone 4 and it's antenna design. Every phone on the market suffers from this to some extent, and the ones shown in the demo also dropped fro 5 bars to 1. It has been blown way out of proportion. The 4G demonstrated almost a one dropped call more out of 100 calls as compared to the 3GS. Most of the noise it turns out, was just that. Noise...
As to your other point, they are offering a full refund after 90 days, no questions asked, and no restocking fee. If you try a case, and you still aren't satisfied, you can return it for a full refund.
This is the reason people buy Apple and they consistently rank tops in customer satisfaction, and why the return rate for the 4G is only 1.4% compared to 6% for the 3GS. People know they will be taken care of. End the end, if it still doesn't suite your needs, return it and get a full refund.
You should be able to Google the EVO user manual and near the end there are a couple pages dedicated to where NOT to touch the phone to keep from interfering with the antenna.
The iPhone problem is nothing new and has been in all iPhones to date and non-iPhones I owned prior. Apple is a big name so people make a big deal out of everything they do. They get a lot of free press/hype when things are good and when things are bad it can quickly turn around.
I have an i4 and it is by far the best reception I've had out of an iPhone(1st gen, 3GS prior). I can grip it with both hands really hard and sometimes manage to lose a bar. I don't think it's a signal strength issue because even in a low signal area I still only lose a bar. Maybe I'm just not electric enough? I also live in a dry climate so who knows.