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The iPhone 4 Debacle

Posted by Matt, 19 July 2010 · 24 views

Oh go on then. I’ll join in.

By now, I’m sure you’re aware of the iPhone 4 drama which started with a small percentage of customers reporting dropped calls or reduced signal strength when touching the metal band that runs around the phone and culminated in free ‘bumpers’ being offered for all affected handsets.

Before I continue, I’ll nail my colours to the mast.

I use a 24″ iMac for my daily work. I’ve used and owned Macs all the way back to the days of the SE30. For the most part, I enjoy using Apple’s products and I’ve watched the company grow from a niche market on the verge of bankruptcy to the hip and cool tech giant that it is now. The first iMac changed the company overnight and the iPod did the same a few years later. I own an iPhone 2G and a Blackberry 9700 Bold. Whilst I enjoy Apple’s products, I do not consider myself a “fan boy”. I’ve never stayed up all night to watch a keynote speech live and I’ve never queued up on release day for the latest shiny kit.

Throughout these revolutionary years, Apple’s PR and marketing has been as slick as its products. Apple makes form as important as function and has prided itself on making desirable products that “just work”. The industry laughed when Apple entered the MP3 market with iTunes and the iPod and it laughed again when it entered the smart phone market. The combination of ease of use and slickness of these products generated sales and quickly made them serious contenders in the market.

For the first time, Apple find themselves in the middle of a PR nightmare with the iPhone 4. This new revision to their successful iPhone products boasts many refinements including a front-facing camera and an improved display along with a brand new design. What should have been another air punching, crowd pleasing launch has descended into a media frenzy that puts Apple squarely in the eye of the storm.

While people were still queueing around the block for their iPhone 4s, others were reporting issues with dropped calls and low signal strength when touching the metal band that is the phone’s antenna. Steve Jobs reportedly fired off a terse “Don’t hold it that way” reply from his personal email account which launched a new internet meme overnight.

The key issue here is signal attenuation. Gripping any phone by its aerial will reduce the signal strength as it comes into contact with your skin. This is why most phone developers hide the radio packs and aerials within the plastic body. However, as some have demonstrated, tightly gripping almost any phone in a particular place will reduce the signal strength.

I own an iPhone 2G (and I have an iPhone 4 on order) and I can drop off a few bars by gripping it tightly for 30 seconds or so. I can make my Blackberry Bold 9700 drop its WiFi signal by gripping it tightly for 30 seconds or so. This of course isn’t a problem in normal use and I do wonder if people are now only noticing this issue for the first time now that it’s been brought to attention. Certainly, most of us are used to signal bars going up and down as we use our phones and my Blackberry flicks between a 3G, Edge and GPRS signal most of the day as I travel. Is this normal variation or down to how we’re holding these phones?

Certainly, some have a much worse issue. Some iPhone 4 users are able to completely drop their signal and therefore calls just by touching a specific place on the band which is easily reproduced in normal use. But this is only a small percentage of the entire iPhone 4 user base, so it does make one wonder if some handsets are manufactured differently or perhaps an early batch were shipped with the fault acknowledged.

Ultimately, though, this recent debacle just polarises people further. Those that hate Apple are frothing at the mouth with vitriol and hug their HTCs tighter. Those that love Apple will just grab the free case and continue using the phone they love. I certainly doubt that many will make use of Apple’s refund offer based solely on the signal issue.

The biggest surprise is really how Apple have fallen. For a company that rarely puts a foot wrong and always markets themselves so well, this is a real turn around.

Apple recently overtook Microsoft to become the largest technology company by stock value. One wonders if they are just a larger target. Microsoft continue to fail at getting a mobile platform off the ground and even if Windows is getting better, Microsoft are fighting a battle that Apple aren’t interest in.

As the saying goes: it must be tough at the top. Now you’ll have to excuse me as I refresh my Apple order page to see if my phone has been shipped yet.