
Daring Fireball: Antennagate Bottom Line - fogus
http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/antennagate_bottom_line
======
kenthorvath
John has been arguing very petulantly lately that all/most smart phones enjoy
the same signal attenuation that the iPhone 4 does.

Whether true or not, the location of the band is particularly ill conceived,
as it is touched by holding it in nearly any comfortable position, even with
the ring finger when held in the right hand and in the left as demonstrated by
Jobs himself.

The fact that the antenna is externally conductive is the real issue here, as
it has been demonstrated that antenna performance is significantly improved by
placing a piece of duct tape or other insulating material over the band gap.
It is very clearly, then, a poor design to not have insulated the antenna in a
non-conductive coating.

This is not a logic test that anyone should fail. Does the antenna have a
conductivity issue when held in the hand? If yes, can the conductivity issue
be resolved with minimal impact on design thereby improving performance? If
yes, did Apple implement such a design? If no, isn't Apple guilty of releasing
a product with an inherent design flaw?

I think the answer is a resounding yes. I also think other smart phones do not
factor into the discussion in a meaningful way.

~~~
jsz0
I doubt they could have designed, tested and produced this type of fix in 22
days. People calling for a recall are kind of arguing against their own logic.
They want Apple to rush out a design change and apparently skip all the
testing (durability, RF considerations) while claiming the lack of testing
caused the original problem. I would guess durability is a bigger concern than
RF. The outer edge of the phone gets the most abuse. A thin non-conductive
coating could chip or wear in an unpleasant way. The bumper case is a good
enough solution for now. The only other alternative is to stop selling the
iPhone for 2-3 months or however long it takes to make a design change and
produce enough units to do a recall. That's going to upset a lot more people
than an extra dropped call here and there I bet.

~~~
moe
_That's going to upset a lot more people than an extra dropped call here and
there I bet._

Only shareholders, not users.

~~~
amatheus
Well, I always hear there are iPhone shortages, so it would annoy users too.
I'm still waiting for the iPhone 4 to come to Brazil and would be VERY annoyed
if there was a new delay on top of the already long lag between the iPhone 4
launch in the US and in the Brazil.

------
zzleeper
Can you stop posting his posts every 10 seconds? I know this is a rant and you
guys don't like them (reddit is for that) but really, all this drama is
getting on my nerves (and kenthorvath is right about jgruber)

------
jrockway
FWIW, my Evo 4G doesn't suffer any degradation of download speed when I
sandwich the phone directly between two people. So maybe it's normal for
iPhones to drop calls when you touch them, but it's certainly not the case for
every phone.

(I was going to guess that it's GSM vs. CDMA issue, but of course, AT&T's 3G
network _is_ CDMA.)

~~~
starkfist
It was important for the EVO engineers to make sure the signal didn't degrade
because you've only got about 2 hours to work with when using that device.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, it does only last two hours when I try to use it as an airport beacon.

------
GavinB
_It’s telling that the criticism surrounding this issue has shifted, quickly,
from speculation about a technical defect in the iPhone 4 hardware to
criticism over the tone of Apple’s response to it._

The conversation shifted because the speculation was proven to be correct, as
stated in the opening paragraph of the piece.

------
huhtenberg
Let's say BMW releases a brand new model, revolutionary. With a parking camera
at front :) But the car horn button has this odd, innovative design whereby it
can sometimes be hit accidentally.

Is this a significant problem? No.

Do all cars have this problem? You bet. Not this _exact_ problem, but still.

Is this a major screw up on part of a company that prides itself on producing
high-end polished cars? Totally.

Do their claims that it's not a big deal affect their image? Absolutely.

------
Tycho
He raises an interesting point about the opportunity cost of giving away these
cases when they would have been _selling_ loads of them. Remember people said
Apple were undamaged by the iPhone 4 leak, that they lost no competitive
advantage? Well nobody thought about the case market, which until then only
Apple had the necessary information to enter. Must have cut into their head-
start by a few million...

------
wwortiz
Something I want to address regarding return rates and complaint rates that I
see on this all the time. Perhaps return rates are so low because people like
the phone and do not want a different smartphone enough that the antenna
issues aren't a big enough deal to warrant returning it. Many xboxes red ring
of death and no one returns them they just get a replacement so it can rrod
again I know my brother has returned about 5 or 6 xboxes now. Most people
don't return products because they don't do exactly what they want people tend
to return faulty products, and only when those faulty products are so bad that
it is better not having one.

And regarding the support number of 0.55 percent, not everyone calls support
for simple things like a dropped call or no reception, add to that the news
coverage where even local news stations are reporting the antenna issues and
apple providing cases for free less people are probably willing to call for a
known issue.

------
ZeroGravitas
Why does no-one find it strange that Apple's antenna testing lab was "secret"?
According to another article they were called "black labs" and no-one knew
what was going on within them.

Now maybe this is just typical Apple PR nonsense to make something as humdrum
as product testing sound sexy but if not then it's mind boggling.

New employee: "So where do we test the iPhones radios then?", "We don't", "Oh,
okay, so what does the antenna engineer I met at breakfast do in that building
over there all day", "Nothing".

Having your system running on intel chips, I can see why that would be kept
secret. Keeping your new models secret before launch, fine. Secret anntenna
testing for what must be the most famous phone in the world, I don't get.
Where is the benefit?

------
MWinther
I, for one, thought this was a good summary of how the Apple camp looks at the
issue right now, whether you agree with that interpretation or not.

------
moultano
Does anyone honestly care? I'd just downvote and shut up about it if that
option were available to me, but it isn't.

------
theBobMcCormick
I think is relevant here:
[http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/7/20/hard-
numbers-...](http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/7/20/hard-numbers-
apple-has-400x-higher-complaint-rate-than-htc.aspx)

------
jared314
Sounds like they didn't factor in the south-paw iphone user demographic.

~~~
MrFoof
It's far simpler than that.

When you are not in contact with the antenna bridge, signal quality and
throughput is much higher than any other iPhone. By a large margin.

When you come in contact with the antenna bridge, signal quality degrades
considerably.

I'm sure this was discussed at length by many engineers, on many occasions.
They did a risk-benefit analysis, and concluded that the pros would outweigh
the cons. They probably also weighed the option of trying to engineer
something that allows them to have their cake and eat it too, but the need to
have something to demo at a keynote, and phones ready for manufacturing didn't
make it possible this iteration.

\-----

I go through this all the time. "Well, we can take this naive approach. It
works. But processing time is O(log n). I think we could take a slick approach
and reduce it to a worst case of 2n, but those worst cases are edge cases.
Even without this approach our processing time is almost always n anyways.
It'll add 10-20% to the development timeline to handle these edge cases
gracefully."

The answer always ends up being not to waste your time designing for edge
cases that happen in specific (and in our case, controlled and planned)
circumstances.

------
Geee
It's an issue but not a big deal, just put the case on. On the positive side,
at least they got something to show next June.

