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Nokia and RIM Respond To Apple's Antenna Claims
awyeah writes "In response to Apple's press conference, where videos of a few devices were shown losing signal bars with a tight grip, RIM and Nokia have both taken shots at Apple. RIM's co-CEOs say that Apple's claims 'appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation.' Meanwhile, Nokia, noting that they are pioneers in antenna design and were the first company to bring to market a phone with an internal antenna, prioritizes 'antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.'"
Consumer report couldn't have illustrated it simpler. You put your finger *here* and the signal strength drops by 15 to 20% or whatever the number was.
There really isn't much mystery. If the signal is strong, then 20% isn't going to change anything. But people generally move around in the same areas, so if your activites are concentrated in a dodgy signal area, that means your calls could go from a 25% drop rate to completely unusable.
During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage.
RIM's market are business people and others who really use their phone for calling, email, and other communications. They bought it to do a function.
People bought the iPhone because it was Apple and they wanted to have a stylish phone. They wanted to look marvelous.
If it wasn't the case, then why did the iPhone sell like hot cakes in markets where AT&T was known to have shitty service? Consumer Reports have been tracking that for years.
Having used both, I'll have to say that I like having an easy to use phone. The Blackberry that I use for work is crap in this department. An iPhone is more functional for non-work use (video, games, pictures).
I'm not saying that there are people who bought it to be stylish, but you're over-simplifying things.
Is math is dead on, Steve said that the 1% was a delta, he said "1 out of 100 more". You just completely misunderstood, which I think is part of why Steve presented it the way he did. To make it sound like 1%, when it actuality it's 1% more than some unknown number which is now said to be 1.4%.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Hand in your geek card. You have no grasp of the issue and it shows. Anand performed tests and the iPhone 4 loses 20 db of signal when lightly touched in the proper spot (lower left gap between antennas). 20 dbs might not result in a visible result on the bar display seeing how 5 bars is larger than that.
What has Slashdot become that we now have to deal with ignorant mass-consumers instead of just geeks with actual curiosity for researching and understanding ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Yeah, but 97.6% uptime, that's still one nine! Pretty good for Apple! Way better than I ever got on my goddamned iPhone... (still zero dropped calls on Verizon/Incredible after two months!) Not so good for telecom, though. I suspect Apple/AT&T is a major driver of the growth of texting over phone calls.
.55% of iPhone 4 users have called in to complain so far. But ya know... after years and years of Apple denying any problems with the iPhone, MacBook Pro (constant kernel panics that mysteriously went away with a patch about a year later, but there was never any problem, noooo; the high-pitched whining sound, the ball-basting heat, etc.)... and censoring any mention of these problems from these forums; after seeing thousands of people complaining about the issue on the Internet-- maybe people figured it wasn't worth their time to call in. Obviously Apple knew about the problem, and obviously they'd eventually have to give out free bumpers, because this was too big to ignore. So why waste your time waiting to talk to a tech support rep who is paid to lie to you about the problem? Let them try stonewalling for a month or so, let them trash their own reputation by treating their customers like crap-- plenty of others will call. It's not like you'll be telling them something they don't know.
Another funny numbers game Steve played. He claimed only
Who cares how many sell in the weekend ? That's not a measure of anything besides marketing Hype. RIM outsells Apple quarter after quarter. That's all that matters. They have more Market share, I doubt they are jealous of Apple iAnything.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
The antennas disappeared into the phone to gain style points, not to improve overall reception. Perhaps an RF engineer could comment?
Primarily you need a manufacturing engineer to comment on this. External antennas are large, expensive to make, and they tend to break, and you must depend on the customer to extend them (if they are extendable.) But from the RF point of view, a well designed and well matched internal antenna is not any worse than an external one. The technology of antennas has also improved, CST came up with specialized simulators and models, new LNAs are now available to increase sensitivity, and so on.
What a whiner and complainer. He's using the press conference to put down his competitors, misrepresent his own company, and lying about the antenna problem.
Lying? He's claiming that all the phones behave the same way, but doesn't show any data. CR compared these phones under controlled conditions.
But can you imagine how it makes Apple feel that so many people still prefer a Blackberry after all the money that Apple has spent marketing its phone? By thinking that one company is more "galled" by people buying it's competitor's product than it's own is anthropomorphizing a corporation in a way that seems peculiar to a certain segment of consumers.
Seriously, I understand fandom (though not of corporations) but I don't understand the attribution of human emotions to legal fictions created in order to make profit while avoiding liability.
Anyway, here in North America, Blackberry's market share is still more than double that of the iPhone, so I doubt RIM is particularly "galled".
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a person who was completely obsessed with maintaining cell reception, I did a ton of testing of cell phones on Verizon. I can say that the Nokias were always the best at holding calls in fringe areas, even the models with internal antennas like the 6236i. All the Nokias I owned would actually gain very little signal strength (1-2db) by extending their antenna. I read that part of their design was to be able to use the external antenna internally or externally. 2nd best was usually Motorola. There were definitely times where other Verizon users had to borrow my phone to maintain a call. When Nokias were dropped by Verizon I would go pick up used ones as backups. All in all, I owned 1 3589i, 3 6015i, and a 6236i, every single candybar style Nokia that Verizon carried near the end.
Testing done by others on Sprint would place the Nokias as the best followed by Sanyo. This was confirmed by many users on howardforums and by an internal Sprint engineer that had access to call drop data.
I wish I could find a source on this, but I believe your understanding is flawed. Infact, if memory serves me, I've seen that Nokia was the company that went to great engineering lengths to make internal antennas that were as good as external ones, and also to convince everyone of it.
My memory may be flawed, so don't crucify me if I'm wrong, but I believe that is what I have seen in the past.