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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.'"
Apple says the iPhone 4 drops one more call per 100 calls. So only 1%. No big deal. But Stevie left something out. How many calls are dropped per 100? He's good at this game; he didn't say. AT&T claims their dropped call rate is 1.4%. 1.4% + 1% is 2.4%. That's a 70% increase. 70% is quite a bit, especially when the antenna is supposed to be better than the previous generation. Yes, Mr. Jobs, "Antennagate" is real.
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.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Nokia should STFU. Their N97 GPS antenna design leaves much to be desired.
As long as no one is arguing over numbers and talking about anecdotes and "priorities" or whatever, this should be maximally annoying...
It must be particularly galling to RIM that a lot of people prefer even an iPhone that drops calls to a Blackberry that doesn't, even when people are given the option to return their iPhone at no cost to them.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Apple has and always will be a company that prioritizes looks and simplicity over function. It's the same reason their products have almost no user options. They are too complicated. They force you to use the product the way they want you to.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
No, we don't need any more evidence; Steve gave us all the evidence we need yesterday that there is a serious problem with iPhone 4's antenna. It drops nearly twice as many calls as the 3GS. It required a bit more research since Steve didn't tell us the baseline for how many calls the 3GS drops per 100, but based on some AT&T statements in the past, it's probably between 1 and 2%, meaning that 1 additional dropped call per 100 *calls* is a good 50 to 100% increase.
From engadget's transcript:
"10:43AM Ryan from gdgt: You showed people almost covering the entire phone in their hand, but on the iPhone 4 it can happen with just a touch. Can you explain that difference?
Bob: When you touch the phone, you put yourself between the signal and your phone, so when you touch that spot you can attenuate the signal, and if you grip it with your whole hand, you can attenuate it even more. We don't build phones with an antenna on top...
Hmm, that didn't really sound like an answer to us."
No matter how much you complain about the bad press Apple has been getting lately, it is certainly deserved. The iPhone 4 antenna issue is *not* the same issue that other phones experience, and is much more severe.
I think you read that wrong. He was saying they don't include many options because they [the options] are too complicated.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I think he meant to say that user options make a product too complicated.
To paraphrase Bjarne Stroustrup:
"An organisation that treats its users as morons will soon have users that are willing and able to act like morons only."
They did respond. They're effectively saying, "this is stupid." They don't need to give more of a response because while Apple has created a few phones Nokia and RIM have created hundreds of different models from the stupid to the very cutting edge smart phone. It is like Starbucks getting into the light bulb industry and telling GE they're doing it wrong. It isn't worth dignifying with a response.
I personally don't believe that it'll make one difference how many calls the iPhone4 drops; people will still buy the phone. The "cool factor" outweighs the ability to make a phone call. Go back and look at the reviews of the original iPhone, it was always inferior to the other phones on the market, but people stood in lines for hours to buy one.
I have ATT, but with a Samsung Blackjack 1. It's ancient by today's smart phone standards, and I don't get any more dropped calls than anybody else I know. Funny though that we always say iPhone dropped calls are an ATT problem, not an Apple problem. Even now, we've got a million excuses, but when it comes down to it and a call is dropped people blame the carrier.
Not at all, no. Dropped calls tend to affect people in certain areas more than they affect others. In this case it also affects people without bumpers more than people with them, and people who don't know to avoid the death point more than people who know about it. This means that it's likely that certain people are dropping *many* more calls than they otherwise would.
You notice how they are clever to not dispute the actual fact that Apples tests were right?
Facepalm...
The fact is that people can make it happen with the tip of their finger, while they can only make a similar thing happen to other phones by covering most of it. The question was asked about how the issues are different, and Bob didn't answer. Obviously they are different issues, but Apple is trying to get the world to believe that they are one and the same. Also, if they were caused by the same issue, why does covering the antenna (like other phones do with the standard casing) with a bumper solve it?
It's true that Apple ranks style very high and Nokia are noted for their antenna skills.
However I am not convinced that Nokia "prioritizes 'antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.'" It's my understanding that the old rod-style antennas perform better than the now common internal antennas. The antennas disappeared into the phone to gain style points, not to improve overall reception.
Perhaps an RF engineer could comment?
As always any Iphone users will vehemently deny that anything is wrong with their beloved device.
Who exactly has claimed this?
Though it may be true that other phones have similar issues. I for one do not believe they are as bad as the Iphone 4.
See also: Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More
Another funny tidbit, the Iphone 4G(eneration) is only a 3g phone. =]
I think you're being confused by something -- the name of the phone is "iPhone 4" -- note the lowercase i and no G (you mistakenly added the G in). It's called this because it's the 4th iphone. Difficult, I know =]
In my personal anyone with an Iphone will call you crazy should you decide to switch to a different device.
I'm not sure what you mean, but in all of these conversations, the only people I see insulting other people for their choice in phones are non-iphone users. Could you point me to some example?
Steve Jobs's point wasn't that Nokia and RIM make bad phones or don't know how to design antennas. Watch the video. Jobs wasn't slamming Nokia or RIM. In fact, he went out of his way to say that they make great phones. All Jobs did was to take twenty minutes to put the problem into context for the reporters who've spent a month making it sound like 1) Apple is the only company in the industry with this problem; and 2) the iPhone is a total dog.
His point was that 1) Apple isn't the only company that makes phones that can lose reception when you put your hand on it and he showed the videos to prove it; and 2) if the problem really was as hideous as reporters had made it sound, Apple would be getting a lot more customer complaints and products returns than the data shows. And Jobs backed up his arguments with empirical data.
Personally, I'd like a little empirical data on how many Slashdotters who are slamming Jobs in this thread have actually watched the video. I'd bet the percentage is vanishingly small.
I don't have an iPhone 4 nor at the moment a blackberry, but when you say:
Well if they are true, I can't replicate it. My Blackberry for sure has signal variations based on its position. I'm quite sure my body interferes with it too, no way it can't. However it doesn't drop calls when I hold it. I grip with the "whole hand wraparound" method all the time, just how I hold the thing. It always seems to work.
It sounds an awful lot like what many iPhone 4 users have said (including friends I've seen with an iphone4 personally, and, eg, the Anandtech review). If you're in a good reception area, the deathgrip makes you lose some signal but does not automatically drop the call. If you're in a low reception area, you can go all the way down and drop a call.
But if you're in a sold 5-bar area with your blackberry OR iphone, it's very possible that even a substantial drop in reception won't move you from 5 bars.
Also, FWIW with the 4.0.1 firmware I get a solid 1 bar with my iPhone 3gs in my house. I used to occasionally get up to 4 and it would move between 3-4 and then drop down to 1. It's clear I'm in a low reception area. The new firmware seems to do a MUCH better job of properly relaying this information.
The issue I am trying to state is this: AT&T drop rate is 1.4%. Is that for the entire fleet of phones currently in service? Is that for just the iPhone 3Gs? Is that for the iPhone4? These are significantly different populations to be looking at. We have two statements: "AT&T drop rate is 1.4% " and "Iphone 4 drops more calls than iphone 3Gs at a rate less than 1 per 100" Unfortunately we do not have a way of determining how these two pieces of information correlate. Without knowing the total fleet drop drop rate and the drop rate of the specific phones we cannot have any clear analysis of the numbers.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
"Did you watch the press conference?"
It looks like Mr. Jobs succeeded. The entire thing was full of misleading "facts." Look up at other discussions in this thread.
Perhaps you missed this part:
"...most of which..."
Nokia has made many, many phone models, orders of magnitude more in number than Apple has. I believe his point was that Nokia has much more experience in antenna design than Apple so it isn't wise to completely discount their opinions, especially when their track record overall is pretty good.
What is real is that they knowingly released the phone with said issues. And are now denying them.
Of course what they don't tell you, or probably don't know, is how many calls are ended intentionally because you are unintelligible to the person on the other end of the line. I've had a bunch of calls where I've had to hang up and call back on a land line because the person could not understand me when I "accidentally" rested my skin against the black line.
iPhones support VPNs only because so many wifi configurations require a VPN.
Apple knows their target market backwards and forwards, that market excludes business men. A western business phone requires physical a keyboard, multitasking, universal generic cut & paste, clean SIP integration, tethering, exchange support, etc. You don't need any of that shit if your selling a combo phone and games platform like Google and Apple.
Yes, some people like yourself fit the iPhone into their business life, fine, you're a minority.
Btw, I'm very happy that my phone lets me keep multiple pdf viewer windows open simultaneously, but I'm still rather annoyed the phone doesn't support printing.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
It looks like Mr. Jobs succeeded. The entire thing was full of misleading "facts." Look up at other discussions in this thread.
To quote Wikipedia on "disinformation":
Unlike traditional propaganda and Big Lie techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions.
Jobs hit all the right notes on both disinformation, and traditional propaganda in the span of one short presentation.
Emotional support: [talking to the press] "we make so many great products, I thought you guys trust us"; "we maybe shouldn't take it personally, but we do, and it really hurts us"; "we have worked out asses off to satisfy every last customer"
At rational level he tweaked and made those antenna video demos (also see http://www.apple.com/antenna/. He used reframing techniques to make the problem appear common in the industry, blurring the differences between the iPhone specific antenna issues and general signal attenuation.
I don't believe a word Jobs says. He has a long history of using these techniques to sell and brand his company, it's how the "reality distortion field" joke came to be.
But you gotta admit: he's so good at it, even when it's apparent he's tweaking facts and inserting little lies here and there, it's hard not to be sympathetic to his side. Which may be largely why he succeeds, even if many won't take his presentations at face value.
There is a magazine in the US, consumerreports.org. They perform independent product testing. The magazine is fully subscriber supported and (as far as I know) doesn't accept any advertising. They don't event accept free products for testing - they go out and buy them retail.
So, when they review a product, I tend to listen. Sometimes they aren't as indepth as you'd like, but that is visible because they also detail their testing methodologies.
There are various other organisations that follow the same format in other countries. I don't know if they are all affiliated. Here in NZ, there is consumer.org.nz.
Where there is no demonstrable physical mechanism or repeatable empirical evidence for health effects, the burden of proof should rest firmly with the tinfoil-hat crowd. That's the only way we can move forward as a civilization, scientifically or otherwise. But instead, it's necessary for the wireless manufacturers to prove a negative. What Jobs should have said was, "Even though there is no physical mechanism or explanation for such a phenomenon, we have to assume our device will give you brain cancer if we don't use a really crappy antenna that's designed specifically to send most of the outgoing signal energy into the palm of your hand."
Hello, reality calling. Nokia and RIM don't have Apple's problems, so what you're saying is that Apple has to meet regulations they do not have to meet. Can you back that up with facts? Or did you don your own tin-foil hat?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This has come up a few times in this thread so far and, while it'd be technically right, I can't help but think it's missing the forest for the trees. Yes, in an ideal situation, an external antenna will be better than an internal one. But, as Apple has kindly demonstrated, it's far easier to mess with an external antenna.
Basically, while the maximum reception for an external antenna may be greater than the maximum reception for an internal antenna, the range of values for reception on the external antenna, combined with the ease of dragging the actual reception closer to the minimum number on that range for an external antenna, might make an internal antenna far more functional; especially if the difference in maximums isn't really that large.
The problem is that Apple is the only company stupid enough to make the antenna able to be shorted out when you hold it, bridging the antenna. All other phones have completely enclosed antennas that do experience attenuation depending on how you hold them, but nothing to the degree of what Apple's does.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
> you've just made as your argument one of the most classical and basic fallacies -- an appeal to authority.
Though in this case the poster's appeal is not fallacious as Nokia have direct and demonstrable experience in the field being discussed.
A fallacious example would be, for example, saying "Stephen Hawking says that Nokia phones hold their signals." Stephen Hawking being an authoritive figure in his domain, but not being an RF engineer and specifically not an antenna designer.
Can you explain how you believed that poster's argument to be fallacious?