iPhone 4: Best Smartphone With Fatal Flaw

July 13, 2010

iPhone X… trans­par­ent bi-stable OLED display…

Back to reality. Consumer Reports on the iPhone 4:

… it sports the sharpest dis­play and best video cam­era we’ve seen on any phone, and even out­shines its high-scoring pre­de­ces­sors with improved bat­tery life and such new fea­tures as a front-facing cam­era for video chats and a built-in gyro­scope that turns the phone into a super-responsive game con­troller. But Apple needs to come up with a permanent—and free—fix for the antenna prob­lem before we can rec­om­mend the iPhone 4.

Consumer Reports says it can­not rec­om­mend Apple’s iPhone 4 because of an antenna design flaw. On July 12th, the pub­li­ca­tion announced its judge­ment on the iPhone 4′s antenna issue. Mike Gikas, a Consumer Reports writer:

Our find­ings call into ques­tion the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4′s signal-strength issues were largely an opti­cal illu­sion caused by faulty software.

This is the first time Consumer Reports has not endorsed an iPhone since the orig­i­nal model was released in 2007. The mag­a­zine con­ducted inter­nal test­ings of three iPhone 4s pur­chased at three sep­a­rate retail loca­tions in the New York area. The tests were com­pleted in a con­trolled envi­ron­ment (radio fre­quency iso­la­tion cham­ber) using a base-station emu­la­tor with other AT&T phones includ­ing the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre. The iPhone 4 exhib­ited the well pub­li­cized antenna issue, but the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre didn’t:

When your fin­ger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side-an easy thing, espe­cially for lefties-the sig­nal can sig­nif­i­cantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your con­nec­tion alto­gether if you’re in an area with a weak sig­nal. Due to this prob­lem, we can’t rec­om­mend the iPhone 4.

Apple has sold 1.7 mil­lion iPhone 4′s in the first three days of its release. Almost imme­di­ately there were reports of recep­tion issues and a bit later the issue focused on a cer­tain spot toward the lower left por­tion of the stain­less steel mid-section that was designed as an exter­nal antenna for bet­ter sig­nal reception.

Apple has been less-than for­ward with this issue. Apple issued an ini­tial press release stat­ing that sig­nal atten­u­a­tion occurs on all mobile phones when held and sug­gested hold­ing the iPhone 4 a dif­fer­ent way. Read Apple: You’re Holding The iPhone 4 The Wrong Way. Obviously the tests con­ducted by Consumer Reports sug­gest not all mobile phones expe­ri­ence iPhone 4-like sig­nal degra­da­tion when held. One of Apple’s sug­ges­tion is to pur­chase an iPhone 4 case. A quick aside: I do like the Vapor case from ElementCase. Read ElementCase Vapor iPhone 4 Aluminum Case: Helps Maintain iPhone Antenna Signal Strength. Gikas on Apple’s response:

You can’t just sug­gest peo­ple use their right hands or buy an after­mar­ket prod­uct. You have to fix it yourself.

Yes Apple, get with it.

The com­pany then issued a state­ment point­ing to a soft­ware bug, which was inac­cu­rate and exag­ger­ated sig­nal strength. Read iPhone 4 Reception Issue: Signal Formula Error? This doesn’t fix the antenna issue but it does reset expec­ta­tions. For exam­ple, the four or five bars you’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing were actu­ally one or two. So when calls fail you won’t be as dis­grun­tled as before. This is a nice mar­ket­ing trick: set low expec­ta­tions or in this case reset to lower expec­ta­tions. But the real­ity is still this: there is an antenna design prob­lem. Wired.com’s Dylan Tweney:

Lab tests by Consumer Reports have con­firmed what Wired and its read­ers have been telling you all along: The prob­lem with the iPhone 4’s recep­tion has noth­ing to do with how the signal-strength bars are rep­re­sented, and every­thing to do with the phone’s faulty antenna design.

Consumer Reports rec­om­mend using duct tape, but I wouldn’t do that. I would instead get the Bumpers, a nice case (Vapor), or try… Colorware. If you look care­fully the mid-section stain­less steel is cov­ered with beau­ti­ful paint. That might do the trick and solve the antenna issue. I would also choose the “Softouch” option just to make sure there’s enough between your fin­gers and the stain­less steel antenna. It would also make it less slip­pery, a fea­ture that feels good in your pocket but is the real cul­prit behind all cement face plants. The Colorware option is a ter­ri­bly expen­sive one at US$250. And it’ll take three weeks to ship, once they get yours. You see, Coloware doesn’t have any iPhone 4 units to sell you so you’ll have to send in yours. If you can stom­ach not hav­ing your iPhone 4 for about a month and spend­ing $250 to make it ultra-cool but with­out guar­an­tees that it will solve your antenna prob­lems, then, well… check this out: My OR3O concept.

The con­clu­sion is this: It isn’t AT&T. It isn’t you. It’s Apple. But don’t all the best in the world have at least one fatal flaw? I’m Not Getting An iPhone 4, Yet.

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