Apple posts iPhone 4 press conference video, 'smartphone antenna performance' page
By Donald Melanson 
posted July 16th 2010 2:57PM
posted July 16th 2010 2:57PM
Well, that was quick. Not only has Apple already posted the complete video of today's iPhone 4 presser (minus the Q&A), but it's also put up a special "smartphone antenna performance" page that offers pictures and videos aplenty of the antenna comparisons shown during the press conference. And you didn't think today could get any weirder. Hit up the links below to see for yourself.
Update: We've embedded videos just after the jump of Apple's gamut of antenna tests. The iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Samsung Omnia II, BlackBerry Bold 9700 and HTC Droid Eris are represented.
Update: We've embedded videos just after the jump of Apple's gamut of antenna tests. The iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Samsung Omnia II, BlackBerry Bold 9700 and HTC Droid Eris are represented.
@cdkee Wouldn't that just mean Verizon has better coverage than AT&T in your area?
Did anyone else notice that all of the phone signal tests in the videos were done by holding the phones in the left hand and the iPhone was the only device shown being held in the right hand. I am sure this had no impact on the test results but I personally found this a little intriguing.
After listening to the first 30 seconds of the conference... Can you media people be more of a fluffer girl for this guy? Who hoots and hollers for a person about to address negative things going on with their company? Then throughout the Q&A he calls the media outlets and your sources bullshit liars.
@teh jughead
engadget's exhibiting battered wife syndrome
whats funny is the sept 30 cut off are they changing the phone that u wont need it after sept 30 maybe apply a clear coat on it
"nearly every smartphone"
I love that quote. I love it so much that I tested out a friends iPhone here at my desk. I watched the bars drop by simply bridging the no no spot with one finger until there were no bars left. Next I took my Nokia N900 and gripped it with two hands covering as much of the phone as possible without covering the bars and guess what.... no change whatsoever.
Hmm, someone's logic is flawed and I will give you a clue, it's not mine.
@Obliquity Keyword "nearly". Maybe that N900 isn't one of them. Notice nearly wasn't written or spoken as "all".
Thanks for your time and BS attempt.
@Obliquity
Why don't you go to Anandtech and argue with them? Their results support what Apple has been saying.
@who said what
Q: Is there a hardware redesign in this generation that could fix this problem?
A: You can go on the web and look at pictures of Nokia phones that ship with stickers on the back that say "don't touch here" -- you can go on YouTube and see these. We should you three phones today, all good phones. So right now the state of the art of the entire industry is that no one has solved this problem. Would I like Apple to be first? Yes. Can we make it better right now? Maybe, we'll see.
I was referring to that. What he ended the talk with is bullshit I am talking about the current gen iPhone. There is no plan for redesign.
The other phones can drop signal if you hold your hand between the phone and mast, AND THERE ISN'T ANY OTHER MASTS TO SWITCH OVER. OR WALL'S FOR SIGNAL TO BOUNCE.
Radio signals are attenuated when they pass your hand, and for this the signalstrength will drop. But:
1: you have to hold the phone so that your hand is between the basestation and phone.
2 There can't be any other basestations to switch over
3. There can't be any walls, or cars, or steep hills, for the signal to bounce from other directions.
To get iphone to drop signal you will just have to deathgrip it. You just have to be in a place where signal is low. No signal bounce from a wall or switching over to a different low signal basestation helps with this.
What's more in apples exples they show how many bars are dropped. And there is no standard for what the bars mean. The signal drop could be only 10dBm, and that would make it one tenth of iphones.
This whole all phones have this problem is a spindoctored responce from Apple Big wigs.
Lets say every phone drops signal if you hold the antenna.
If so the question of the day is
"WHY" apple put the antenna where people hold on to ?
Why cant it be like the top part of the phone where its rarely touch ?
Or Apple just wanted to be unique and make a phone that need to be held right ?
So many questions ......
@sweetvine Because the FCC stipulates where the antenna can and can't go.
@BrandonHarris
You should have watched the videos - about half are actually showing just how difficult it would be to hold the phones in order to cover the antenna. The first video he has to hold it in the upper-right corner with his right hand covering that corner - not exactly your typical use, unless you're playing frisbee with the thing.
Every phone shown in his demo with the exception of the iPhone 4 and the Blackberry required holding the phone very low on the body in order to sufficiently cover the antenna to cause a problem. I don't know about you, but I don't hold my phone in my hand then rest my hand on my shoulder...
Yeah, other phones can lose signal strength depending on how you hold it. The difference is that the other manufacturers don't go out of their way to call their antenna design "magical" and actually spend a considerable amount of time deciding where to put the antenna in order to minimize the effects of attenuation.
Apple just digging deeper and deeper....
Its not even funny anymore its really sad....
@parabola
...also that they will offer refunds
10:48AM Q: Will there be refunds for AT&T contracts?
A: I believe so, yes.
@MicrosoftOwns
I just wish I could be as publically arrogant as Steve obs and get away with it. Holding a press conference in the Sound Chamber of Denial and offering up free bumper covers while plastering the Internet with this propoganda....wow. Just wow.
If Microsoft had done this you'd see the Mac groupthink calling for congressional hearings.
I can confirm they are right, same problem on my 3GS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvG5WH8B--E&feature=youtube_gdata
@Fez
I get it.
Well, he couldn't guarantee, could he? Nobody can. Maybe's all you can say about next race when your best horse is already taking a beating in the current one.
Also, did you really expect Apple to talk about their next step? If there's one thing that I've known following engadget and other tech blogs that is Apple is one company that doesn't even talk about a press release till the are ready with it. Well, sometimes it totally works against them. And this is one such time.
I'm an antenna designer, and I've designed antennas for cellphones before. I've done the sort of testing Apple describe. I've used anechoic chambers, designed them and commissioned them.
It's interesting that Apple have chosen to discuss signal strength bars on their webpage. Since they have 17 anechoic chambers they could have measured all the relevant phones and talked about their recieve and transmit performance in exact terms. They could have done that as well as showing the rough field-test comparison using bars. It's strange that they haven't.
Lot's of folks on the discussions on Engadget are saying that they don't see an issue with there smartphone, or they don't see such a big issue. This makes sense to me, although some smartphone antennas do detune very badly there are many that don't.
I've written about all this on my blog http://robertthorpeconsulting.com/wordpress/?p=162
@Robert Thorpe Because consumers aren't technical. They work off signal bars...
@Cats
Sure, consumers aren't technical. But, they could have presented the data in a form that consumers could understand. Distance from a base-station for example.
This conference should have been 8 minutes long, starting at 10:29 when they announced they'll be giving users a free case to fix their obviously broken hardware and giving full refunds to anyone who who paid money for a broken phone, and ending at 10:37 before they started the Q&A session where Steve Jobs does what he always does: refuse to directly answer questions, makes up excuses, and lie his ass off.
I'm so fucking tired of this company it's sickening.
@kenny goo Then stfu and go find some other articles to read.
@CDice
Are you putting this same link in EVERY thread to defend apple? There is obviously something wrong with the phone in that video, just like there is something wrong with the iphone. Just because another manufacturer made a similar screw-up doesn't mean that Apple didn't screw up themselves.
You may think it's unfair that Apple gets so much publicity for their screw-ups when nobody cares about samsung, but it is certainly their own fault. They have the most massive marketing and coverage of any company when they do a product launch. This helps them immensely when they make a good product and they thrive on it. The flip-side of this is that when they screw up, they get the same spotlight.
The vast majority of people have never heard of a samsung galaxy S, so if samsung screwed it up, most people won't notice.
If you need to make a page about how your phone isnt the only phone to lose bars, then you failed.
wasnt apples point of the iphone was to change the way phones are? then they fall back and say "oh our phone is just like other phones"
not one of my phones or anyone I know phone lose bars cause they pressed there hand on a certain part.
if they would just say "looks, we fucked up, we'll fix em"
didnt they said the problem was a software problem? now they say "ok fine, we did fuck up but we're not the only one"
I'll stick with my Windows 7 pc and my Droid X (its ballin, if you get a chance to fool with one, do so)
@steve0mac Droid X...so compact. You do realize that Jobs said 0.55%, right? Or were you too busy ranting. It is clearly not every iPhone 4 or at every location. Way to hyperbolize it though! There is no way around the laws of physics here for ANY phone manufacturer and I can guarantee there will be Droid X YouTube clips when it's released showing this same 'issue'...
@epoplive Because a lot of phones actually exaggerate their cell signal which means little to what you actually receive..
"The iPhone4 is perhaps the best product we've ever made at Apple"
Exactly when does a visionary become a liability?
Conference summary: Obfuscate, deflect, deny, attack, do not admit wrongdoing whatsoever.
Funny that Jobs is supposedly a big Dem donor; sounds like his hero is george w. bush.
Just for fun, I tried doing the same death grip on my BB Bold 9000 and here are the results (Rogers Canada).
-70dbm : Sitting on desk OR holding it naturally WITH silicone cover.
-81dbm : Death grip WITH silicone cover
-90dbm : Death grip WITHOUT silicone cover.
I never tested this before this iPhone mess, hmmm.
Discuss?
@bigd33ns
That's really bad degradation. How are you measuring it? Using the field test mode?
Although I haven't tested them myself lots of folks in the antenna engineering world have told me that Blackberries don't have very good antenna characteristics.
That doesn't mean that all Blackberries are similarly bad though, or that other smartphones are always as bad as Blackberries and iPhones.
Look, you would be foolish not to put a case on this phone anyway. The screen is just too easy to shatter anyway.
I loathe Apple's policies. I am stuck in their ecosystem for various reasons. However, wrapped in a case the iPhone 4 is a nice unit.
Good phone, but Apple needs a serious ego check
@pple is poo Wow, there just is no sense of objectivity here. All you guys providing anecdotal evidence to dispute actual numbers: you're doing it wrong. Find some detailed, third party studies that demonstrates this is solely an iPhone problem, or do it yourself; I'm sure you'd be hailed as a hero by the masses if you could pull it off.
Instead, all I see is that Apple took the time to gather data, yet all y'all think a single "BS" comment on a tech-blog is enough to disprove their position, how sad. It's no better than those "debates" we get to see during every presidential campaign, and those are *pathetic*.
Yeah, one finger touching the antenna causes a bar drop, but is it any worse a bar drop compared to the full "death-grip"? And who uses a phone like that anyway?
All you "I don't lose a single bar on my [BB, Droid, etc.]" Which network are you on? What's your signal strength in your location? Where are you? I don't lose a single bar on my 3GS either, when I'm in an area of good signal strength (e.g. downtown, here in Boise, ID). Go to my home office, though, and, yep, the death-grip works, because in my neighborhood, AT&T's network sucks.
Not a single objection here has a shred of credibility to back it up. You're obviously happy to just spout meaningless, hater tripe and say "Yup, my job is done. I'll get me an uprank and more hater cred." Why don't you show some initiative and put together some meaningful data? Otherwise, you're just part of the never-ending circle-jerk of idiot, Anti-[Pick a Company] commenters who swarm in on threads like this just to wank each other off using the (+) button.
Q&A is pleasantly not added in the video...
So let me get this straight..
When Apple says that we're holding it wrong, and didn't want to provide everyone with the free bumpers, everyone complained about having to pay for something that's wrong at THEIR end.
Now that they ARE offereing the bumpers for FREE, people are NOW stating that the free bumpers aren't enough??
Notice how all the peole stating that are NOT iPhone 4 owners. On that note, let us OWNERS worry about the issues and how Apple handles it, and you other folks just have a Coke and smile.
Someone needs to do an independent study to validate Apple's video. I believe that it's an issue with many phones. Consumer Reports was able to claim that this issue affects "every" iPhone, thus it would follow that it is also possible to reproduce the problem on "every" other phone as well. The study by anandtech is the most illuminating that I've seen http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
I'm not sure if anyone has said this yet, but I have tried in many different ways to replicate the problem on my Droid. I went into the settings and status and looked at the dBm numbers. From my desk I see anywhere from -92 to -87dBm and it fluctuates no matter how I tried to hold it. So it would appear Motorola figured out how to do it in a package barely bigger then the iPhone. Perhaps Jobs should hire some Motorola engineers.
@MicrosoftOwns
The grip of death is completely un-natural for me and actually hurts my wrist to hold it like that. Please don't use your generalizations to include everyone.
If you really believe this corporate bullshit which is just a PR spin to make it look like Apple didn't mess up the phone design and just wants to point fingers and deny guilt, then you are probably waiting in line for your bumper or refund for previously purchased bumper. I hope other cell companies mentioned in this schlock sue Apple. They have been spinning half truths in the media about competition and their offerings and Apple has had it coming to them for a long time.
@MicrosoftOwns
Exactly whats wrong with people blowing this subject out of proportion. Have you even watched the other videos? Most of them were posted on YouTube months before the iPhone hit shelves.
Nobody in the MacRumors Community created the videos...they were merely posted on the site. Problem IS that nobody when tose videos were posted but when it happens to Apple...people get out their pitchforks.
Grow up...and just realize that Apple can't control the laws of physics.
lol love the apple site with videos, suppose this won't shut up the fandroids though.
As I said before this whole issue was blown out of proportion by the media! It's the proximity issue that is the real issue.
And I am glad Apple brought it up in the press conference otherwise I would of been annoyed!
...yet the first thing I noticed on those images is just how much better that Retina display looks than the other phones when zoomed in like that. I think this is whole page is an elaborate hoax at subliminal marketing.
This is a joke. Can't replicate the Bold 9700, neither could the guy in the audience, and Jobs replies "it won't happen everywhere"? Really? So only in some few places on Earth the Bold 9700 looses signal due to it being held like the iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4 looses strength everywhere ...
Steve Jobs is my hero.
@SeanBest No, if you would ask someone with an i4, or get one yourself, you could see that it doesn't happen everywhere. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem at all on my i4. I haven't dropped a call since I bought it on launch day either. It's probably because I live and work in downtown LA...
Pathetic. They don't even admit to THEIR fault.
Hey, Steve, why do you go on and on about how gorgeous the iPhone is, only to force us all to put a stupid rubber band over it? Great idea.
Ummmmm..... I have a Blackberry that looks just like the one on the video, did Apple steal mine or something? Anyway, I can it anyway I like and it appeared to make no discernible difference!!!
But then...
I tried to hold my phone the same way demonstrated by Apple in the video on the antenna page video... and the freaking signal bars on it actually went UP!
iPhone... iNot thank you very much ;-)
@binarymoot made a typo :-)...
"I can it" should have been "I can HOLD it"
I like how Engadget finds it necessary to post nine different articles on the same event. Why don't you guys just go find Steve Jobs and bend over for him jeez....
Just tried holding Omnia II in at least 20 different ways ... could not make it drop bars ... uhh Apple stop lying to people!