iPhone 4 Reception: Don’t Touch the Antenna!

Funny, Steve Jobs failed to mention in his keynote that the iPhone 4 can’t be gripped just any old way. In some unwelcome news for Apple and AT&T, customer complaints are pouring in about lost signal and poor call quality on their new devices. The reason? User error, according to an Apple spokesman. The company representative states that any mobile device is sensitive to being held on/around the antenna, and yes, iPhone 4 performance will suffer if it’s held incorrectly.

Is this shocking to anyone else? In a way, it seems like Apple got so caught up in everything else an iPhone does that it lost sight of how it functions as a mobile phone. Sure, it was innovative to build the antenna right into the frame, but does it even work? Early reports such as this would indicate that it does not.

The fix, as explained by the Apple representative, is to avoid gripping iPhone 4 “in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band.” What does this mean? I can’t say for sure because I haven’t held one yet, but I can say for sure that nobody is going to like being told by Apple that they can’t hold iPhone 4 any which way they want.

The representative also offered this gem of advice: “. . . simply use one of many available cases.” And Steve Jobs, known to respond occasionally to customer emails, told one user, “Just avoid holding it that way.”

Let’s be honest, this is probably an issue that everyone will learn to deal with, but how can it be seen as anything but a terrible design flaw? Tech sites and bloggers are already on Apple’s case, with Engadget summarizing most of the arguments like this: “. . . we can’t help feeling like this is really a bit of a bad design. If the only answer is to move your hand, why didn’t Apple just move the antenna position?” One day after the phone’s official release, this is what we’re all wondering . . .

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Devin Wieland

 

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