

Live iPhone 4 press event coverage - andrewcaito
http://live.gdgt.com/2010/07/16/live-iphone-4-press-event-coverage/

======
rauljara
Q: Are you willing to make an apology to investors? Steve: You know we hear
from customers who love this phone and have a great experience with it, and
we're doing a lot to help them with any issues they're seeing. To investors,
you know, you invest in the company we are, so if the stock goes down $5... I
don't think I owe them an apology.

Whether or not Jobs is bs-ing about loving his customers so much, I wish more
CEOs took this attitude. I think that doing your best to make your customers
happy reaps far more benefits in the long haul than doing your best to make
investors happy. In Apple's case at least, the fact that they ignored what
their investors demanded of them during their dark days actually made the
investors a lot more money.

~~~
zppx
I think this is the correct attitude when you're an entertainment company, or
a company that does have a direct relationship with costumers, but might not
work for other types, such as services for enterprises.

~~~
macrael
Is it? When you are selling services for enterprises, shouldn't your focus
still be on making those businesses happy? I've never been in such a market,
so maybe I don't know, but it seems to me like your focus should be similar.

~~~
zppx
Yes it is, but there the focus on the customer is far less important than on
the investors. This is part of something that makes Apple and some other
companies unique.

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gjm11
Brief summary of what they've said so far:

1\. Similar things happen to all smartphones. (They had videos showing them
happening to many other smartphones.)

2\. This isn't making lots of people return their iPhones. (Return rate ~ 1/3
that of 3GS at the same point in its life.)

3\. The iPhone 4 does drop more calls than the 3GS, but by less than 1%. (Not
clear whether that's 1% of all calls or 1% of calls dropped on the 3GS.)

4\. They're going to give everyone a free case and refund everyone who's
bought one from them.

5\. They've got improvements coming up for the proximity-sensor problems some
people have had.

6\. That's about it.

~~~
zhyder
It's 1% of all calls:
[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone-
reception-pc-0923-rm-eng.jpg) . Am I the only one that thinks that's actually
a lot?

~~~
ccorda
If the norm is a 5% drop rate, that's a 20% increase.

If the norm is even higher, then the increase is less as a percentage, but no
wonder ATT won't release the numbers.

~~~
mfarris
If my family and friends' experience is any indication, the drop rate is over
50%. So it's probably going from 55% to 56%: horrible to a teensy bit more
horrible.

I live in Los Angeles. There are cell towers uglifying the sky everywhere. My
favorites are the mock trees -- one in Burbank is a squat, fake palm tree with
"coconut" repeaters. And despite the apparent ability to put towers absolutely
anywhere... AT&T still blows.

~~~
brown9-2
Your friends and family have one out of every two calls dropped?

~~~
mfarris
It's comical. I call home when I leave work. We might talk for five or ten
minutes as I drive. This requires two or three calls, due to the drops -- on a
major freeway with five bars of reception.

My family and friends have similar issues. A couple don't have it so bad
because they're on the West Side, where AT&T seems to have built more towers
-- gotta keep Beverly Hills & the movie studios happy, you know.

Oddly, we have little trouble with 3G data. I can stream podcasts and use
Google maps simultaneously. It's the calls that are the issue.

~~~
swernli
I have a weird theory about that, actually. I have seen some similar issues in
the Seattle area when moving from one part of the city to the next; the signal
is at full strength, but the call suddenly drops, almost as if I'm crossing a
boundary. Now, I preface this by saying I know little to nothing about the
cell phone network handles calls, but thinking about this made me wonder if it
had anything to do with handing off the connection from one tower to the next.
Maybe it's better to have fewer, higher power towers to minimize hand-off than
many low powered ones. Of course, that's exactly what most people don't want:
high powered cell towers blasting them with radiation.

But I have to wonder if this problem is exaggerated by the 3G connection
maintained by the phone. My dad used to have the same problem in NY (not the
city), but he switched to edge and stopped dropping the calls. He just turns
on 3G when he knows he wants to do some faster web browsing, which is rarely
for him. Maybe you could try turning off your 3G and see if it reduces your
problem in LA?

------
Shabaz
One of the things that most bothered me in the initial responses from Apple
(the Jobs emails and the open letter) is that none of them acknowledge that
there is a fundamental difference between antennas from other smartphones
losing signal and the iPhone 4, where the antenna is exposed and can be
shorted, even with one finger. I'm kind of disappointed they apparently still
don't acknowledge that (maybe the live transcript is incomplete).

Citing dropped call numbers or return rates or showing other smartphones with
signal reduction caused by something completely different just seems like
willful misinformation. I suppose their usual MO is to not acknowledge
complaints head-on, but that's usually with new features people would like to
see. If I can short an antenna and change its RF characteristics so as to lead
to an instant dropped call, that seems like a fundamental engineering flaw,
and I would've liked them to acknowledge that.

~~~
sigzero
> caused by something completely different

Um, from what I saw it was caused by the same thing. You hold a phone a
certain way you lose signal strength.

> that seems like a fundamental engineering flaw, and I would've liked them to
> acknowledge that.

I watched the whole thing and several times it was acknowledged as such. Maybe
you wanted them to say it was only an iPhone4 issue and not a general
smartphone problem?

~~~
ergo98
>Um, from what I saw it was caused by the same thing. You hold a phone a
certain way you lose signal strength.

Apple is playing some extraordinary deception with that. They're comparing a
death grip on phones (which is entirely unnatural and I certainly don't hold a
phone like that), and saying "See, it's all the same".

That _isn't the issue_. The issue is ruining the profile of the exposed 3G
antenna by electrically distorting it (whether with your body or against the
GPS antenna).

It was pretty clear when he talked about the 3GS and cases -- a death grip
with or without a case will yield exactly the same outcome. But they're trying
to conflate the downsides of an external, unavoidable antenna with holding the
phone in a ridiculous fashion.

~~~
dieterrams
Hey, neat. An Apple comment by ergo98 that I agree with.

------
wvenable
In the Wall Street Journals live blog of the event, Jobs indicates they have a
Verizon testing site:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/07/16/live-blogging-
apples-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/07/16/live-blogging-apples-press-
conference/)

"We have both an AT&T and Verizon cell site set up on our campus" for testing,
says Jobs.

Did Jobs go out of his way to say _Verizon_ there?

------
carbocation
Free bumpers.

If you already bought one, you'll get a refund.

If you didn't, they'll mail you one.

If you want to return your undamaged phone for a full refund, you can do that,
too.

------
cwilson
Something no one is mentioning or commenting on: When the 3GS launched the
majority of buyers walked out of the store with a case in hand. When the
iPhone 4 launched 80% of buyers were not able to take a case with them as well
(due to their being no third party cases at launch and a shortage of bumpers).
If it would have been the opposite, and 80% of customers walked out of the
store WITH a case, I'm guessing that "less the 1%" stat about the iPhone 4 vs
3GS would actually flip to the iPhone 4 as having the better ratio of dropped
calls.

I'm willing to bet you'll see @Gruber focus on this point heavily, which is a
good thing, because it's a great point by Jobs.

~~~
extension
Does 3GS reception improve with a case? I thought the iPhone 4 only improved
because of the exposed antenna.

~~~
powrtoch
According to Steve (and others) you get a similar phenomenon with earlier
iPhones, it's just that the "do not touch" zone is in a different place. So a
case would help any of these phones.

~~~
extension
The case helps the iPhone 4 because it prevents conductive contact between
your skin and the antenna, right? Previous iPhones had no exposed antenna,
yes? Or did they? If not, the case would not have made as big a difference.

------
AlexMuir
A lot of people ask how Apple didn't pick this up in field testing.

I think the answer is that they wrapped the iPhone 4 in plastic to camouflage
it as an iPhone 3GS (as we know from the Gizmodo phone). Hence all their field
testing was effectively done with bumpers on.

~~~
bond
They knew... Steve Jobs: "The iPhone 4 went through all of these tests. We
KNEW that if you held it in a certain way, the bars would go down."

~~~
gamble
Absolutely. This is a human psychology problem, not an engineering problem.
They designed the phone knowing that it suffered more attenuation than other
phones, but it also dealt with highly-attenuated signals better than previous
iPhones. Overall reception is the same or better, all things considered.

What killed them was the way the reception bars dramatically plunged toward
zero within seconds of bridging the antennas. If the iPhone 4 had shipped with
the bar distribution formula in 4.0.1 and used the same level of hysteresis as
other phones, no one would have noticed the drop and everyone would have
happily gone on using their iPhone 4's oblivious to the attenuation.

------
twapi
We’re not perfect. Phones aren’t perfect. - Steve Jobs

------
pistoriusp
Just to get some clarity on how people who have the device actually feel about
all of this (And that it's not just the media), how many of you are going to
return the iPhone 4?

------
elblanco
Good free case, problem solved in my mind. Recall avoided, patch applied,
everybody stays happy.

Iphone 4gs, design it and sell it with the case.

------
tvon
In Q&A they seem to be glossing over or ignoring the whole "if you bridge the
gap the signal drops" issue (demonstrated here with a paperclip
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgouzUMlQpY> but as I understand it your
finger will do the same thing).

At least when asked somewhat directly, one engineer gave a complete non-
answer.

~~~
ugh
What you see there is a drop of between 6 and 22dB (from four bars to one
[+]). Gripping the iPhone will reduce the signal by at most 24dB.

I don’t know whether they don’t acknowledge that. They showed a “X marks the
spot” slide. That, to me, seems to be a pretty clear acknowledgement that
merely touching that spot weakens the signal.

[+] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-
analyzing-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-
apples-ios-41-signal-fix)

~~~
ergo98
In reference to the "x marks the spot" they claimed that it "showed you where
to cover the antenna", trying to draw a parallel with covering the internal
antenna on any other phone.

That is ridiculous. You aren't "covering the antenna" when you cover that
spot. The antenna is the big strip of metal _above_ that spot. Instead you're
upsetting the profile of the antenna, which is entirely different.

The presentation was incredibly deceptive and flawed.

------
thehigherlife
Interesting, they're going to give away a free case. There seemed to be some
sentiment that wouldn't happen.

~~~
sigzero
Yes but I think a lot of opinions were formed before the actual facts were
known.

------
AndrewHampton
Based on the little I know about signal strength for digital phones, the
number of bars really doesn't matter, The bars could just be replaced with an
indicator letting you know whether or not you have strong enough signal to
make a call. And from that perspective, the stats discussed today that there
is less than one additional dropped call per 100 calls make this whole thing
seem like a non-issue.

However, what I haven't heard discussed and would like to hear about from
someone who knows what their talking about is whether or not signal strength
affects data transfer rates. I use data a lot more than voice on my phone and
if it's significantly easier to reduce the signal quality on the iPhone 4, I
don't think I would get one.

~~~
vitobcn
Without getting into details about digital modulations, yes, parameters such
as signal strength, network congestion, user speeds, etc. do affect transfer
rates.

The speeds quoted by phone providers are always the maximum transfer rates
allowed by the communication standard used by the network.

To give an example with WiFi networks. Even though a router might support
802.11n and have a maximum speed of 144Mbit/s, if you're far from it, your
transfer speed could only be 11Mbit/sec.

~~~
AndrewHampton
Thanks for the explanation.

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SandB0x
This is a good quote, from the Q&A session:

 _You could make a really big smartphone that doesn’t have this problem — some
of these guys are making Hummers now — so big you can’t get your hand around
it. But no one’s going to buy that._

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ajg1977
Those pictures of other phones losing signal were hilarious.

Yes, if you hold other smartphones in a clam-like grip then they do lose
signal. But not when you place a single finger on one small spot on the
outside of the phone.

It's good that Apple will be providing free cases, but it's still going to
suck when they start releasing phones with tweaked antenna insulation in a few
months that eliminates this issue.

~~~
wmeredith
I can't believe people still aren't getting this. Their return rate has been
~1%, they've received apple care calls on 0.55% of the phones they've sold.

This is a non-story blown out of proportion by the press who obsessively over-
cover Apple products.

(Disclaimer, Apple iPhone owner, 3G and now 4; no problems with either.)

~~~
tptacek
I agree, but, live by the sword, die by the sword.

------
est
Apple is really bad when it comes to bars.

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone-
reception-pc-0858-rm-eng.jpg)

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aschobel
Body language from Q&A is telling:

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/iphone-
reception-pc-1034-rm-eng.jpg)

~~~
macrael
I think they are just listening to a question, there.

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aaronbrethorst
"Maybe we should have a wall of PR people to insulate us, but we don’t."

I bet Katie Cotton and Steve came up with that line together.

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tszming
Try to search "are not perfect" in Google you will see somethings.

