Samsung has made a statement concerning Apple’s use of the Omnia II to defend the iPhone 4 antenna problems and offers a mature response which makes perfect sense. Here is the full statement- “The antenna is located at the bottom of the Omnia 2 phone, while iPhone’s antenna is on the lower left side of the device. Our design keeps the distance between a hand and an antenna. We have fully conducted field tests before the rollout of smartphones. Reception problems have not happened so far, and there is no room for such problems to happen in the future.”
More information is at Gizmodo who again make much more out of it just to have another dig at Apple.
Apple succeed. For every company responding they all now get drawn into problem. As soon as they dismiss issue, on comes YouTube with videos to prove otherwise . Samsung was last company to fall for the bait.
Samsung probably need to make a rebuttal to reassure markets/shareholders. This seems a pretty mild comment and is probably the best way to go. Gizmodo are turning into a parody however.
Another non-denial denial. Better than the desperate hand-wringing and whining from RIM, though.
“Better than the desperate hand-wringing and whining from RIM, though.”
That’s the RIM that makes smartphones with great signal and voice quality? Sorry, but they had a right to whine in my opinion.
This antenna issue was ‘created’ by the web sphere and Apple should have responded to this media not by creating even more confuson for Smartphone customers (unless FUD was the aim
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I think Apple have tried to mislead people by criticising other phones. Of course you can make a signal drop if you wrap your hand around a phone: almost any phone. It’s obvious physics. The point about the iPhone problem is that some people only have to touch the antenna gap to experience signal loss. It’s not the same issue at all and Apple just look bad by trying to say it is the same. It is a problem peculiar to their antenna design.
At no point did Apple “criticize” other manufacturers or their phones; in fact, Jobs went out of his way to say that the devices used in his demonstration were all good phones.
It makes absolutely no difference whether the signal reduction is caused by touching a particular spot or by cupping the phone in the palm of your hand. The fact is, all the phones shown in Apple’s presentation lost signal strength when being held naturally, and, for all practical purposes, that’s the only time it matters.
“That’s the RIM that makes smartphones with great signal and voice quality?”
Perhaps, but my wife’s Curve still craps out in exactly the same places as my iPhone 4 – on the backroads near my house, in the middle of Macy’s at the local mall, and at various dead spots at her office. That doesn’t make it a bad phone does it?
Which Curve is it?
I’ll let you know when I see her later tonight. It’s a fairly recently issued corporate model with a trackball. All I can remember is that the model number starts with an eight… but there are an awful lot of those, aren’t there?
Probably a Pearl if it has a trackball- they are poor generally.
Nope, definitely a Curve. I’d text her now to find out the model, but she’s up to her eyes in it with back to back meetings and stress today.
Maybe “criticize” is too strong a word. I still think that the substance of what I said was correct. Rather than taking it on the chin and admitting that there is a problem which should have been detected and could easily have been fixed before it was released (by say a non-conductive coating), he chose to say that many other phones have the same problem. I think that is only partially true and seems, to me, to be a smokescreen. I cannot make the signal drop on my wife’s Nokia or my Treo no matter how I hold them. I can get the signal to drop on my Hero if I press the back of it really hard into the palm of my hand but in everyday use I would never do that. So there are 3 phones which don’t have any issues in that area. I wonder how many phones they tested which didn’t have the problem.
The thing is, the iPhone is a very expensive phone and users should expect it to work properly, without bumpers. Having said that, I think it is a brilliant device and I’m sure Apple will sort it. It wouldn’t put me off buying one.
Oh OK- an 83xx model. Can’t be the 8520- that is brilliant with signal.
@Graham
I don’t think the actual mechanism of each individual phone’s signal reduction makes that much of a difference to the argument. The fact is that many phones DO lose signal when held perfectly naturally, whether that is by covering the antenna, by “bridging a gap”, or some combination of both. The Samsung Galaxy S, for example, can lose all signal when a finger is laid on the lower left side of the phone (as you look at it). Whatever the cause, the effect is the same, and it’s the effect that matters in my book.
Just one other thing, there are plenty of places where I cannot get the bars to drop on my iPhone 4, either, no matter how I grip it and no matter how I touch it. Proves nothing.
Are those places areas of good signal quality? My understanding, from someone at work who does this stuff for a living is that the 3rd bar is a biggie and the difference between the high end and low end is quite large.
You were right, Shaun. My wife’s phone is an 8310.
Well, of course, I think it’s very clear that in areas of stronger signal you are far less likely to see any observable drop in bars.
Therem have only been a couple articles that have actually looked at the iPhone 4′s antenna performance with any seriousness and rigor. Both were written and published by the engineering guys at Anantech. In the second of the two articles (shown below) they bear out my own conclusion that, in areas with weak signal, the iPhone 4 can actually make and hold on to calls far better than the iPhone 3GS, something I’d noted and described here on PDA-247 at least a week before either of these articles had been written. They also show exactly how the iPhone 4 measures reception, both pre- and post- the 4.01 update.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-apples-ios-41-signal-fix
Ironically, the reception bars on Android 2.2 running on the Nexus One are calibrated in a very similar way to how the iPhone 4 calibrated its bars prior to the Apple’s 4.01 update; that is to say, they provide an overly optimistic view of the strength of the carrier signal. Perhaps that’s why there are so many videos on YouTube showing the Nexus One dramatically dropping bars, many of which predate “Antennagate” by many, many months. Here are two which date back to February:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2g5J4qPp54&feature=youtube_gdata
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIA_lMwqJA&feature=youtube_gdata
No crusade by Gizmodo, no media frenzy, no armchair experts pontificating about flawed design. Life’s simpler when no-one gives a monkey’s what you do and you’ve only sold a handful of devices.
The thing is Apple bring it on themselves. When you make great claims people have the right to expect great things. If you say ‘We may be late to the multi-tasking party but we are going to be the best,’ then you need to be able to back it up. If you say, ‘We believe the iPhone is the best smartphone in the world,’ then people have the right to expect a higher standard.
If I bought a Rolls Royce my expectations would be higher than if I bought a Ford.
Apple set a very high bar and a very high price. They warrant higher scrutiny & shouldn’t complain if they get it.
I agree that Apple has to take the rough with the smooth – as I’ve said before, it’s the price it pays for for being the most talked about tech company on the planet.