iPhone antenna issues.. Whats your thought about this?

[Ryfly]

I'm not sure 100% where i should post this, but i figure i put it in local first and mods, please feel free to move it to the appropriate topic.


I just watched the iPhone 4 PR on CNN and of course this being a radio issue, this i figure be a good place to discuss the science and what Jobs was saying compared to that.

From what i know, touching any antenna with our body obviously 101 makes it worse and then sometimes better depending what frequency and modulation it is.

To me i think Steve was on the money on the antenna issue but the Algorithm mistake i believe is BS. To me, it's not how it calculated, but really what the baseband is hearing between the data and noise/static. I believe it was as simple as -50dbm, your 100% and at -110 your at 1 bar or close to no service. How hard could that math be..... What do you think about the math mess up/fix? Is it BS or actually a justifiable issue?


Next is the death grip, this to me, of when i even first saw the keynote, i saw this a issue. Exposing the bare antenna to the human body was either a bold move or a mess up. I know from simply my scanner and easily hearing the distortions of the slightest hand or body movement, we have a big effect without going into the science of it. But i'm a loss with the actually science and tuning of the apple antenna to the actual effects of crossing the cell antenna with the wifi antenna with your hand?

I did search the forums first and couldn't find a thread about this, and i'm very curious to what the many radio experts have to say about it.

 

[n5ims]

"We [Consumer Reports] did, however, find an affordable solution for suffering iPhone 4 users: Cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works. We also expect that using a case would remedy the problem. We'll test a few cases this week and report back." from this link --> Consumer Reports Electronics Blog: Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can't recommend the iPhone 4

You'd think that as much hype this phone had and the high price, this issue would've been caught during testing and resolved (possibly by something as simple as a clear or case colored plastic covering). Sounds like it either had automated testing, or the issue was dismissed due to not enough lefties doing the testing or low signal testing wasn't a priority with AT&T's great signal strength over 97% of the US <sorry, their adds try to make this point and just typing it made me shake>.

 

[tonyclark]

Just think all those fools could of bought a nice scanner for that money.

 

[mancow]

When you touch an antenna it detunes. Wow. A multi-billion dollar corporation with top notch engineers never thought of this?

 

[WisconsinRailfan]

Don't hold it there, just wish I could get it on Verizon. Yea, I drank the Kool-Aide. I have had many smart phones being a geek, but after owning the I-Touch, I'm even considering switching to AT&T. A few co-workers have the phone, and they do not have any issues.

 

[RadioDaze]

On the face of it, I thought it was a failure of RF 101 to think the antenna should even be touched at all by the body, let alone allow contact at a critical junction.

Safety = FAIL
Engineering = FAIL

 

[rexgame]

This seems like two unrelated things, all cell phones calculate their "bars" differently, Apples is known to be odd.

The antenna issue seems to be poor design. (Like most Apple products, style guys win over engineering nerds, period.)

 

[Citywide173]

low signal testing wasn't a priority with AT&T's great signal strength over 97% of the US <sorry, their adds try to make this point and just typing it made me shake>.

LOL

Remember, that's 97% of all Americans, not 97% of the US....just means they have coverage in most of the population centers....it's amazing what you can do with numbers to make yourself look better.

As far as the phone, I'm a Blackberry person on Verizon, but the few I've played with are nice pieces of equipment. The problem, and my guess is that all popular, in demand electronics such as this suffer from similar issues, is that consumer demand is ever-pushing for more advancements in smaller packages to be released yesterday. I'm sure an engineer or two made mention of the issue, but were shooshed in favor of going to production to get the thing out to the public and make money.....

 

[SCPD]

I love Apple (Own a Mac and plenty of their other gadgets), but this is snowballing into a serious PR disaster for Apple based on their failure on elementary RF and electric physics, as well as media sensationalism. My crumbling, ancient Verizon LG flip-phone is in its last days, and in Worcester, as well as my hometown, Washington, D.C., VZW's service is atrocious, so I am seriously considering switching to AT&T and the iPhone, engineering notwithstanding.

And if I buy an iPhone, I would buy a case for it anyway because it is simply too fragile of a device to use unprotected (I would still say the same even if I were speaking about previous generations of the iPhone.)

No phone or service is perfect, especially here in the Northeast.

 

[rexgame]

No phone or service is perfect, especially here in the Northeast.

There was one, the Motorola Timeport, not a place from VA Beach to NYC that thing didn't have a signal. Never lost signal under BMore Harbor or any the tunnels in NYC or Hampton Roads, shame they don't make em like that anymore.

 

[AK9R]

I'll stick with my Motorola Droid. After 60-70 years in the radio business, I think Motorola may have the edge on Apple when it comes to RF design.

 

[slicerwizard]

A really bad design (uninsulated bridgeable antennas!) and a deliberately misleading RSSI display. A great combination!

And to top it off, Steve Jobs spewed lies during that Friday sitdown, like "Only x percent of owners called about the antenna problem (therefore only x percent were affected by it)"; right, because every affected user who heard about it in the media wasted their time calling Apple Care to make sure they knew about it too. And then there was his claim that other phones have antenna issues, so that makes it OK for the iPhone4 to have a drastic flaw.

All in all, it was a sleazy, whiny PR/marketing whitewash job with the usual mix of charm, charisma, bluster, exaggeration, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Just another example of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field at work.


Reality distortion field

Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Mac project. Later the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of his keynote (or Stevenote) by observers and devoted users of Apple computers and products.

In essence, RDF is the idea that Steve Jobs is able to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bluster, exaggeration, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. RDF is said to distort an audience's sense of proportion or scales. Small advances are applauded as breakthroughs. Interesting developments become turning points, or huge leaps forward. Impossible-seeming schedules, requirements or specifications are acceded to. Snap judgments about technical merits of approaches are sometimes reversed without acknowledgment.

 

[gewecke]

These so-called smart phones just keep getting dumber ! As a result consumers seem to think they're getting such a cool deal,when all they get is a overpriced,junk infested,fragile toy that can't withstand a simple drop without damaging the display!
A motorola I-855 has a REAL external antenna and beats the pants off this crap,both in price and performance and is built like a brick! Show me a smart phone(sic) that can beat a milspec job site phone like the I-855?

 

[AK9R]

And then there was his claim that other phones have antenna issues, so that makes it OK for the iPhone4 to have a drastic flaw.

I heard somebody in the media pick up on this yesterday evening. Jobs has admitted that Apple's phones are no better than anybody elses. That one comment reduced the iPhone's perceived superiority to nothing.

On the other hand, if you talk to many iPhone users, they rarely talk on the darn things. They use them for text messaging, emailing, web browsing, and playing media, but not for making phone calls.

 

[datainmotion]

A really bad design (uninsulated bridgeable antennas!) and a deliberately misleading RSSI display. A great combination!

And to top it off, Steve Jobs spewed lies during that Friday sitdown...

I don't disagree and yet, they'll continue selling the phones YouTube - iPhone4 vs HTC Evo- The "Safe For Work" version

I hear the latest App that Jobs and Company will be slipping into the next update, flashes select memory from the users brain like the wand in "Men in Black" :lol::lol:

 

[Astrak]

I'll still stick with my old WinMo HTC touch diamond, of course it's running a custom ROM with many add ons and a dual boot of Android. I thought when Apple was introducing the phone didn't Jobs say something about the antenna being "magical design".

 

[iMONITOR]

Apple followers would buy dog crap if they put the cute little Apple logo on it! :roll:

 

[CCHLLM]

Apple followers would buy dog crap if they put the cute little Apple logo on it! :roll:

Ha ha ha! I personally know two supposedly bright young engineers who are completely eatup with Apple-anything who abandoned their company-subsidized Verizon BlackBerries and bought into the AT&T/I-junk thingie (which are not subsidized, BTW). Both are about to loose their jobs because they can't be communicated with when involved in engineering site jobs more than 5 miles out of town and off the major highways. Between the two of them they "borrowed" my Verizon phone 14 times in just one day according to the call log. That stopped when I asked them to compensate me for their airtime and data charges. Now they're using the landlines and the internet from their laptops and *****in' about it the whole time.

The construction people on site are on Nextel and they've got coverage on site also, so I guess the pop-culture crowd has found a worm in the Apple.

PS: AT&T's own coverage maps on their own website tells the story, and even that's hyped.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Hmm... an antenna that you can touch... heck any modern phone that has an internal antenna for that matter is going to suck when compared to phone that has an external/pull up antenna. My /\/\i876 kicks my BB8350i when it comes to signal strenth. Low signal strenths on my i876 turns into no coverage on my BB8350i. BB8350i vs. /\/\ i355... not even a fair comparison, even if i had a 3w amp and a higain antenna on the BB.

now have an exposed antenna that you can de-tune just by picking up the phone... that is some piss poor R&D. and to citywide173, good call on the 97% figure.

 

[slicerwizard]

Ha ha ha! I personally know two supposedly bright young engineers who are completely eatup with Apple-anything who abandoned their company-subsidized Verizon BlackBerries and bought into the AT&T/I-junk thingie (which are not subsidized, BTW). Both are about to loose their jobs...

Speaking of - despite iPhone 4 sales in the millions, Apple has ****canned their iPhone engineering chief, Mark Papermaster. So much for Job's claim that the iPhone 4 is no worse than any other smartphone. "It's so good, we threw the engineering chief under the bus."