Oh shoot. The call-dropping left-bottom corner touch isn’t a manufacturing defect but a feature! Read iPhone 4: Touch Left Corner To Drop Calls and Double iPhone 4 Download Speed With Black Electrician Tape? for more info about this insane issue. Apple has made an official statement to Engadget regarding the iPhone 4′s call drop feature:
Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.
The problem? The way you hold the iPhone 4. So the solution? Get the Bumper or change the way you hold the iPhone 4. Do you know what I think? I had the pleasure of watching Objectified yesterday. It is a brilliantly-made documentary film about industrial design. Dieter Rams, former Braun design director, stated that good design is as little design as possible. The iPhone 4 certainly fits that description: from the outside it looks like a high-tech rectangular Oreo cookie. Rams even noted Apple for being one of very few companies that takes design seriously. Well. It looks as though Apple thoroughly messed up with this antenna design.
I think the antenna design was clever but there were two big blind spots. The first blind spot: extremely contradictory to what Apple has done in the past, it forgot to look deeply into how us human beings hold our phones, especially rectangular bar-shaped ones like the iPhone. If Apple knew that gripping any mobile phone would result in a reduction of antenna performance then it should be working to reduce that effect. Instead Apple designed the iPhone 4 so that when regular human beings hold it the reduction effect is amplified. That is terrible design!
The second blind spot: Apple has been and continues to be a very secret company and it does all it can to prevent the world from knowing what it is up to. The iPhone 4 has been the most leaked product in Apple’s recent history but the second blind spot is directly related to Apple’s attempt at total secrecy. The iPhone 4 was always covered with plastic when being tested in the wild. The 3GS-looking plastic case prevented testers from noticing what a lot of iPhone 4 users are now complaining about: dropped calls, lower signal bars, etc. when holding the iPhone 4. Should Apple be less secretive? I don’t have an answer for that. But it definitely was a blind spot for Apple when testing the iPhone 4.
I am perturbed at Apple’s official statement insinuating that those experiencing dropped calls are holding the iPhone 4 the wrong way. You screwed up Apple; fix the design so the design works with the way we hold the iPhone.
Nokia is taking a jab at the iPhone 4′s reception issue, something Steve Jobs is denying (read Steve Jobs On iPhone 4: “There Is No Reception Issue. Stay Tuned.”). Nokia postulates in How do you hold your Nokia? four ways you can hold your Nokia phone:
- Thumb and finger
- The cup
- The balance
- The four edge grip
And here’s what Nokia states:
We’ve found any of the four grips mentioned above to be both comfortable and as you can see, offer no signal degradation whatsoever. This isn’t a feature you’ll only find on high-end Nokia devices either. It’s something that’s been a part of pretty much every Nokia device ever made (perhaps with the exception of that teardrop 3G one, which was a bit ridiculous).
The key function on any Nokia device is its ability to make phone calls. After all, that’s why we know them universally as mobile phones (or smart phones, feature phones or mobile computers – though the same grip styles work for those, too). One of the main things we’ve found about the 1 billion plus Nokia devices that are in use today is that when making a phone call, people generally tend to hold their phone like a…. well, like a phone. Providing a wide range of methods and grips for people to hold their phones, without interfering with the antennae, has been an essential feature of every device Nokia has built.
Of course, feel free to ignore all of the above because realistically, you’re free to hold your Nokia device any way you like. And you won’t suffer any signal loss. Cool, huh?
Well, no. User SmackMule has some reception problems with his Nokia E71, recorded and posted up on YouTube for everyone to see: Nokia E71 Reception Problems. He even has an AT&T Femtocell installation at home that brings the connection up to five bars from a maximum of three bars before. When he holds the E71 the five bars drop down to… zero. When he puts it back down on the table the five bars reappear. In the comments he mentions that he is cupping the E71. I guess “the cup” is not a viable method on the E71. There is the off chance that his E71 could be a lemon, but this might be a more industry-wide problem. Are you a Nokia user? Have you had any reception problems like this?
Engadget: Ah, I thought this would happen and it really is happening. Read Google Will Force AT&T to Offer iPhone Tethering. I don’t know if Google’s Android 2.2 forced the issue or if Steve Jobs reality distortion field finally took hold of AT&T but with iPhone OS 4.0 tethering is on.
First, the data plans: they are a changing. The current “unlimited” (but actually limited to 5GB per month) is US$30 per month. AT&T will change that to DataPlus ($15 per month for 200MB) and DataPro ($25 per month for 2GB). You can still stick to the $30-per-month plan and can switch to these new plans at any time. If you’re on the DataPlus plan and go over the 200MB limit you just pay $15 for each additional 200MB. Now if you’re on the $25 DataPro plan you only pay $10 for each additional 1GB. Take a careful look at your bandwidth usage and see which plan best fits you. On to tethering.
Tethering is an extra $20 per month option for the DataPro plan. That means you’ll be charged $45 (plus a bunch of taxes and fees) per month to tether the iPhone. My guess is that if you’re a hardcore iPhone user and on the $30 per month “unlimited” plan it would be worth considering jailbreaking to tether. Personally, I think iPhone tethering is a bit too expensive especially since Verizon is offering a $30-per-month no-limit personal hotspot on Palm’s Pre Plus. Of course, the Pre Plus is no iPhone, but the iPhone tethering’s dent to the wallet is painful. But would you really need to tether an iPhone HD to you computer? With so many pixels (read iPhone HD: 960×640 Confirmed?) you could do most anything just on the iPhone HD. I wonder if you can tether the iPhone HD to the iPad…
This one is sneaky on AT&T’s part: the new data plan duo affects the iPad too. I guess the truly unlimited data connection on the iPad may have been too much to handle for AT&T and it will only stress the network even more going forward. If I had a 3G iPad with the $30 unlimited plan there is no way I would go for the new plans. The new data plans launch on June 7. iPhone tethering launches when iPhone OS 4.0 launches, probably in late June or July.
Here’s the poke by Droid X:
Introducing the DROID X by MOTOROLA, the ultimate smart phone. Its screen is gigantic. Its capacity is huge. Every experience from messaging to movies is larger than life. It can even connect with your HD TV so you can share little things with large audiences. And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls. You have a voice. And you deserve to be heard.
Apple, your turn.
LaCie’s IamaKey, CooKey and WhisKey. Great names and greater designs, by 5.5 designers. The best designs have little design. These USB flash drives are almost always carried on a key chain, but before the 5.5 designers-designed LaCie USB keys it didn’t click. Now it does and it’s brilliant!
The folks making decisions for the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Fast Company magazine, think likewise and gave the Gold Award. Only 38 receive the Gold, out of 405 finalists. Check out fastcodesign.com for more cool designs from 2010 IDEA.
LaCie’s USB keys are not just pretty on the outside; they are made of aluminum, is water resistant and scratch resistant. Kind of like a real key. They are quite affordable starting at US$19.99 for 4GB at LaCie.com (US).