So Apple’s response to issues with the antenna on its new iPhone 4 is to offer free bumpers to all users while maintaining that the problem affects all smartphones. CBR looks at the reaction to "Antennagate".
"You know, we’re not perfect. We know that, you know that. And phones aren’t perfect either," said Steve Jobs at the start of the hastily-arranged press conference Apple called to deal with what has become known as "Antennagate" – where holding an iPhone 4 in a certain way results in a dramatic drop in signal. "But we want to make all of our users happy. If you don’t know that about Apple, you don’t know Apple. We love making our users happy," Jobs continued.
"Mr Jobs’s mea culpa was barnstorming," exclaimed Maggie Shiels on her BBC dot.Maggie blog. "That caught everyone off-guard. Seriously, Apple admitting that it is fallible was pretty unprecedented for a company that is perceived as ensuring every "i" is dotted and every "t" is crossed before a product is launched."
But Jobs went further than just admitting Apple had made a design mistake with the new phone when it put the antennas in the steel case that surrounds the outside of the device. There is, he said, an inherent problem with all smartphones that results in a drop in signal, Apple "just made it visible", Jobs said. ""The heart of the problem is that smartphones have weak spots. This is life in smartphone world. Phones aren’t perfect. Most every smartphone we tested behaved like this."
To prove his point Jobs demoed what appeared to be the same issue on a number of other phones, including the Blackberry Bold, HTC Droid Eris and Samsung Omnia. Naming other manufactures in the debate drew a furious response from BlackBerry maker RIM’s co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.
"Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable," they wrote on the company blog. "Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage."
The pair continued: "One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple."
HTC too had its say: "Apple should face its own problems," HTC chief financial officer Hui-Meng Cheng said. "The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones…they (Apple) apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone." Samsung also questioned Apple’s claim. "We have not received significant customer feedback on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia II," the firm said in a statement.
Apple’s initial response to the saga when reports of signal drop first emerged was to simply tell users to hold the phone in a different way. Unsurprisingly that wasn’t enough to satisfy many of Apple’s customers so the firm then issued a more detailed response. The issue was connected to the way the phone displays signal strength, and was nothing to do with the actual level of reception the phone was picking up, the company said.
Calling the response arrogant CBR editor Jason Stamper said that the initial response was ‘classic Apple‘: "Apple [was] "stunned" when it discovered it had got its signal strength formula wrong. To fix this, it said it would adopt AT&T’s recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal. That it was using its own (totally wrong) formula in the first place is just classic Apple: it thought it knew better," he wrote.
"Incredibly, it also said it would be making "[signal strength] bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see". In other words, they still couldn’t do anything about the faulty antenna problem and they couldn’t improve signal strength, but they could sure as hell make very weak signals look that bit more healthy by making the bars bigger," he continued.
That still didn’t appease the iPhone faithful, leading to the press conference where Job announced a free "bumper" for every users or a refund if they had already bought one. Apple certainly hopes that this is the end of the matter, but only time will tell.
