

The $0.001 DIY iPhone 4 Antenna Fix - donohoe
http://www.fastcompany.com/1663768/iphone-4-antenna-fix?partner=hacker_news

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rriepe
Is this a joke that I'm not getting? Scotch tape? Really? "This problem isn't
real, but here's how you fix it."

He also completely dismisses public perception. Did everyone forget Toyota's
mess so quickly? If there's a perceived problem with your product, then
there's a problem with your product.

~~~
martythemaniak
I can only imagine the reaction if a major Apple competitor had the same
problem. Apple gets a pass on everything.

~~~
ugh
That’s really what you think? Really?

What do you expect would happen if some Android phone had similar issues? I
don’t think a lot more than this shitstorm. A few articles on Gizmodo and
Engadget maybe, nothing like the widespread coverage we are seeing here.

~~~
CrazedGeek
In fact, there were a few (smaller) problems with the EVO 4G:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/14/htc-evo-4g-and-droid-
incr...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/14/htc-evo-4g-and-droid-incredible-
suffering-from-unresponsive-scre/) [http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/13/htc-
evo-suffering-from-gl...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/13/htc-evo-
suffering-from-glass-separation-issues/)

None of the coverage was anywhere close to the iPhone's coverage.

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blhack
Could you imagine buying a brand new Mercedes CL550, finding out that if you
grip the steering wheel with your left hand it will shut the car down, and
then having Mercedes insist that there is no problem and that you should buy a
steering wheel cover?

This is so far beyond unacceptable for apple. I cannot believe (well yes,
actually, I can) that they're not doing a recall on this or, at the very
least, providing users with a free case.

The other tragedy of this whole thing (or maybe it's just brilliance on behalf
of apple) is that the stories about the antenna issue are all overpowering the
issue that 3G users are having with iOS4. V4 renders the phone slow and buggy.
Opening SMS messages will sometimes crash the SMS program. Things are slow,
opening the ipod function can take upwards of 10 seconds sometimes.

Really really really really bad form apple. The last 6 months have been
terrible for them.

~~~
j_b_f
In this example the Mercedes also costs the same as a Honda, right?

Look, Apple sets expectations super high, and to a certain extent that's their
fault. But they're also innovating like crazy and, unfortunately, there are
bound to be some missteps. Would you rather they slow things down a bit? I
wouldn't.

~~~
confuzatron
Ah yes, good point. A Honda that shut down if you touched the steering wheel
would of course be met with relaxed shrugs from owners.

~~~
tptacek
Because that's what happens when you touch an iPhone? The phone equivalent of
what would happen if, hypothetically, Honda shipped a car that "shut down"
when you touched the steering wheel?

~~~
confuzatron
No, but apparently according to the original apologist comment, a faulty
Mercedes is okay if it costs the same as a Honda. Do you agree?

I think 'lalalalala omg not listening - nerrds!' would be a more credible,
mature response than some of the fallout from this antenna issue.

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ZeroGravitas
Am I the only one confused by the combination of "this happens to every phone"
with fixes, including both this and the official one(s), which are workarounds
to prevent shorting the exposed antennas, which no other phone has?

~~~
jws
RF energy is strange stuff. The coupling to your hand will change its
radiation pattern and reception sensitivity. For any phone, where you put your
hand changes its RF abilities. The engineers try to make it so common hand
holds aren't too bad.

If you are old enough to remember analog TV and "rabbit ears" then you might
remember the frustration of trying to adjust your rabbit ears to get good
reception on a station. Sometimes it would be great while you were standing
near the antenna, but bad when you walked away. Sometimes people would resort
to distorting the patterns directly with aluminum foil tags on the rabbit
ears.

The same thing happens to phones, though the distances are much smaller
because of the frequencies.

If you want to experiment, remember that the direction to the current tower is
also important in this system. There is no reason to believe your phone
receives uniformly well in a polar pattern about your vertical axis.

Go someplace with less than full bars. Get a grip. Turn 360 degrees slowly
enough for the bars to respond, record data at various angles. Try a different
grip. Repeat.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Yes, I get that stuff. Now how does attaching a bit of tape over the gap, or
avoiding bridging the gap with your hand play into that?

It's like they're saying "yes this is a common problem in phones that we're
well aware of _and which our unique new "genius" design makes worse_ " without
wanting to actually admit the latter bit. So you end up with strange-double
talk advice that tells you how to fix problems they're not admitting to
having.

~~~
jws
Most importantly for the meme, that little gap in the metal provides a focal
point for people to stare at and say _Well there's your problem!_ It isn't
nearly as interesting as "hand vaguely cupped about the lower third with the
pinky extended and then curled back touching the bottom left side while up
against my face" (which is the transmission killer on my first generation
iPhone. If our connection breaks up, there is no reason to assume it was an
accident.)

It seems likely that plain old electrical conductivity is in play here. Some
people's skin conducts much better than others and anecdotally tape insulation
helps. So that is a different mechanism from most(all?) other phones.

------
commieneko
Like my idol, Léon Theremin, I will use this "defect" to develop a special app
that allows the user to play music by stroking and caressing his/her iPhone on
its various "sensitive" radio receptors.

Then we can sit back and wait for our very own Clara Rockmore to emerge...

------
watmough
I've always held my 2G at the top of the phone, primarily to avoid attenuating
the wi-fi noticeably, but also to reduce the energy being absorbed by my hand.

Carrying this over to the iPhone 4.0 appears to completely avoid this
'problem'.

It's a shame, because the phone is fantastic and in the areas of magazine-like
screen quality, running multiple apps, speed and build, has exceeded my
expectations wildly.

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pierrefar
This is sad in a way: people just spent a few hundred dollars on a shiny
(literally) device and now they need to tape it in a very visible place so
that it works consistently.

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coin
All this fuss over the perceived problem of the antenna, it reeks of premature
optimization. Has anyone actually observed this being a problem while on a
phone call? I'm not talking bars, since bars are a very loose indication of
signal strength.

~~~
Geee
Phone calls generally work even with very bad reception. More important here
is the data transfer over 3G which has been observed to slow down
significantly. The "death grip" is exactly how you would hold the phone when
browsing.

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ntoshev
My iPhone 3GS (and probably all of them) have a somewhat similar problem: when
I hold it at the bottom I cover the microphone with my palm and the other side
can't hear me. When they start asking me to repeat, I change the way I hold
it. Not sure how I discovered this is the problem, maybe other people think
they have poor reception.

But there was no media hype about this one. Maybe if Steve Jobs didn't mention
the innovative antenna design, no one would have noticed.

------
nirmal
Marco Arment also has a solution: <http://www.marco.org/733115343>

For those who want to make a clearly visible statement about their antenna
woes. :)

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mkramlich
I hate it when someone on the Internet starts being practical.

