The $0.001 DIY iPhone 4 Antenna Fix | Hacker News Reader

The $0.001 DIY iPhone 4 Antenna Fix

fastcompany.com

58 pointsdonohoe46 comments

Is this a joke that I'm not getting? Scotch tape? Really? "This problem isn't real, but here's how you fix it."

He also completely dismisses public perception. Did everyone forget Toyota's mess so quickly? If there's a perceived problem with your product, then there's a problem with your product.

I can only imagine the reaction if a major Apple competitor had the same problem. Apple gets a pass on everything.

If a competitor's phone was as good as the iPhone 4 in all other areas, I suspect they'd get a little bit of a pass too.

...and that's how the monopoly begins. Seriously, that type of thinking echos the same problem that Microsoft had. It's not our software, you just don't know how to use it.

On one hand, it doesn't appear that they are getting a pass at all. This seems like they've gotten far more bad press for it than is necessary.

On the other hand, other device makers should really step up their game. I don't like the idea of a new computing monopoly, but who is out there seriously competing with Apple right now? (If what the other device makers is doing currently is competing, Apple doesn't have anything to worry about for a while).

That’s really what you think? Really?

What do you expect would happen if some Android phone had similar issues? I don’t think a lot more than this shitstorm. A few articles on Gizmodo and Engadget maybe, nothing like the widespread coverage we are seeing here.

In fact, there were a few (smaller) problems with the EVO 4G:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/14/htc-evo-4g-and-droid-incr... http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/13/htc-evo-suffering-from-gl...

None of the coverage was anywhere close to the iPhone's coverage.

Let me help your imagination:

Nobody would give a shit if this was any other company.

You'd get maybe 1/10th of the stories and 1/100th of the up-votes and comments around the web. Maybe.

> I can only imagine the reaction if a major Apple competitor had the same problem. Apple gets a pass on everything.

It's interesting because the same problem has been reported on both the Nexus One and the Evo 4G, yet nobody gives a damn.

Oh look, your statement is completely the wrong way around.

Same stuff with Google's remote application killing, had Apple done it it'd be all over the web and would be the first link on HN. Google did it, the HN link has already fallen off the front page.

Same stuff with Google's remote application killing, had Apple done it it'd be all over the web and would be the first link on HN. Google did it, the HN link has already fallen off the front page.

Ironically, when I Googled it, the top story was titled "Google pulls an Apple". Apparently, Apple doesn't get a free pass even when Google pulls applications for their app store ;)

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Pulls-an-Apple-Yank...

I actually think Toyota's mistake was taking the complaints too seriously and responding with such concern. Apple's approach, of dismissing the 'problem' and blaming it on the user, seems much more likely to help the whole thing blow over.

When you express too much concern about a possible problem, I personally have found that it legitimizes the problem to those observing the situation.

Although, this comment would be much more interesting if I had any data to back it up.

I think you're right about Toyota, but I don't think the opposite extreme is justified either.

Apple's flippant handling of the situation just shows that they have a crappy attitude. Sony's the same way; when they got complaints about a shoddily made button on the PSP, they completely dismissed them, with some line about it being a work of art or something.

It leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Sure, Apple can afford it (much more than Sony anyway) but it still doesn't make it the right move. They're too prideful to admit it's a flaw, but I can guarantee that this will be fixed in the next iteration of the iPhone. And they'll come out with this same crap line, "We did fix it, even though it was never a problem."

I think this whole Toyota metaphor is too strained to be useful. Toyota's problem was tied up with the fact that car crashes kill and injure people. That not only makes it a lot easier to raise a mass panic, but also raises the stakes a lot: Juries understand and fear car crashes, lawsuits over car crashes pay a lot of money in awards or settlements, and there is an entire division of the legal industry with years of experience in litigating over these specific issues.

Whereas it's hard to see a lawsuit over poor cellular reception going anywhere. I presume that somewhere in my cellular agreement is a clause stating that AT&T isn't liable for dropped calls. I mean, if that clause didn't exist surely the citizens of San Francisco would own AT&T by now?

Yeah, that is a really good point. Do you think if Toyota shrugged it off more that would of been more or less useful if it became a legal matter?

Really? Are you seriously comparing maybe 2 bars of lost reception that many people have been unable to replicate, IF you hold the phone a certain way, to a product that could kill you. And not in a "cigarettes can kill you" sort of way, but in a firey ball of death sort of a way?

I would certainly prefer that the phone did not lose any reception no matter how it was held. It is worth complaining about so that maybe apple will fix it. It is, however, in no way comparable to Toyota's mess. Not even close.

I think that you're misunderstanding his point. He doesn't mean to compare the scales of the problem; he's pointing out that if many people think that there's a problem with your product, you need to take that seriously rather than be dismissive about it. That's regardless of what the problem is, or how serious it is. No-one's trying to compare the magnitudes of the alegged Toyota problem with the alleged Apple problem, I think.

Except that there is no problem. I have an iPhone 4 as does my wife and I can cover the WHOLE metal band with my hands and not drop any bars. It's mass hysteria and whining. Get over it.

"Bars" is not a unit of useful comparison. What happens to your cell signal dBm when you do that?

(For one, if you have excellent coverage, handling the antenna only makes it slightly less excellent. If you have already shoddy coverage, it's a bigger problem.)

Could you imagine buying a brand new Mercedes CL550, finding out that if you grip the steering wheel with your left hand it will shut the car down, and then having Mercedes insist that there is no problem and that you should buy a steering wheel cover?

This is so far beyond unacceptable for apple. I cannot believe (well yes, actually, I can) that they're not doing a recall on this or, at the very least, providing users with a free case.

The other tragedy of this whole thing (or maybe it's just brilliance on behalf of apple) is that the stories about the antenna issue are all overpowering the issue that 3G users are having with iOS4. V4 renders the phone slow and buggy. Opening SMS messages will sometimes crash the SMS program. Things are slow, opening the ipod function can take upwards of 10 seconds sometimes.

Really really really really bad form apple. The last 6 months have been terrible for them.

I heard Mercedes said to solve the left hand issue is to just not steer using your left hand. Using the left hand for steering has serious side-effects such as not looking as cool, limited window waving abilities, and inability to ash a cigarette out the window while driving.

> limited window waving abilities

Only on the continent. On the isle you need your left hand for the stick shift anyway.

"The last 6 months have been terrible for them."

They've sold a million IPads a month, are on track to sell that many Iphone 4s, untold millions of Ipods, etc. and the press is gushing over them like they're the newest teen idol sensation. I want to have a terrible 6 months like that!

Ha. I guess I should have said it has been a terrible month for their consumers (since that is what I actually meant; terrible 6 months as in they've been terrible).

I've been a happy Apple consumer over the past 6 months (actually, far longer). Remind me why I'm upset? I have an iPad, an iPhone, and a Macbook Pro.

Because the most recent update for the iPhone rendered it slow and crashy, apple banned cross compilation from flash to objective C for iOS apps (for no identifiable reason), apple bans anything from their app store that competes with their business model (like grooveshark), and now their flagship product has a major engineering flaw and they don't seem to care.

Maybe you're still happy after the company has treated you like crap, but a lot of other people aren't.

I swear to god I'm not saying this to pick a fight with you or take a side in some Internet sharks/jets thing: I couldn't be happier with how Apple is handling me.

I'm not an iOS dev though. Are you? It may be a different story if you want to get in bed with them. I don't.

I bought an iPhone 4. It hasn't shipped yet (I'm not crazy enough to sit in line for a phone). But if I had just found out about the yellowy thing and the antenna thing? I would STILL be tempted to wait in line for one, and I would certainly still be shelling out for it.

I think I speak for the vast silent majority of technology customers here.

In this example the Mercedes also costs the same as a Honda, right?

Look, Apple sets expectations super high, and to a certain extent that's their fault. But they're also innovating like crazy and, unfortunately, there are bound to be some missteps. Would you rather they slow things down a bit? I wouldn't.

>In this example the Mercedes also costs the same as a Honda, right?

Well...I can buy a bare-bones AT&T go phone for $15 outright...so no, not at all.

Howabout this: the BMW that costs the same amount of money not only doesn't have the problem, but doesn't have the restriction where only other people with mercedes are allowed to ride in your car.

Ah yes, good point. A Honda that shut down if you touched the steering wheel would of course be met with relaxed shrugs from owners.

Because that's what happens when you touch an iPhone? The phone equivalent of what would happen if, hypothetically, Honda shipped a car that "shut down" when you touched the steering wheel?

No, but apparently according to the original apologist comment, a faulty Mercedes is okay if it costs the same as a Honda. Do you agree?

I think 'lalalalala omg not listening - nerrds!' would be a more credible, mature response than some of the fallout from this antenna issue.

I've had no problems with iOS4 on my 3G. Definitely a better experience than 3.0 a year ago so far.

My 3G is getting really slow, can't wait until they start selling the iPhone 4 over here so I can upgrade. I've heard the 3G gets bogged down when keeping a gazillion SMS messages on it, though, so maybe it's more to do with that than iOS4.

Actually, when the Mercedes A-class showed up, and the motor press were able to tip it over, Mercedes did pretty much exactly the same thing. Of course, the A-class isn't a CL550, but then again, it still cost a whole lot more to buy than an iPhone. :)

Am I the only one confused by the combination of "this happens to every phone" with fixes, including both this and the official one(s), which are workarounds to prevent shorting the exposed antennas, which no other phone has?

RF energy is strange stuff. The coupling to your hand will change its radiation pattern and reception sensitivity. For any phone, where you put your hand changes its RF abilities. The engineers try to make it so common hand holds aren't too bad.

If you are old enough to remember analog TV and "rabbit ears" then you might remember the frustration of trying to adjust your rabbit ears to get good reception on a station. Sometimes it would be great while you were standing near the antenna, but bad when you walked away. Sometimes people would resort to distorting the patterns directly with aluminum foil tags on the rabbit ears.

The same thing happens to phones, though the distances are much smaller because of the frequencies.

If you want to experiment, remember that the direction to the current tower is also important in this system. There is no reason to believe your phone receives uniformly well in a polar pattern about your vertical axis.

Go someplace with less than full bars. Get a grip. Turn 360 degrees slowly enough for the bars to respond, record data at various angles. Try a different grip. Repeat.

Yes, I get that stuff. Now how does attaching a bit of tape over the gap, or avoiding bridging the gap with your hand play into that?

It's like they're saying "yes this is a common problem in phones that we're well aware of and which our unique new "genius" design makes worse" without wanting to actually admit the latter bit. So you end up with strange-double talk advice that tells you how to fix problems they're not admitting to having.

Most importantly for the meme, that little gap in the metal provides a focal point for people to stare at and say Well there's your problem! It isn't nearly as interesting as "hand vaguely cupped about the lower third with the pinky extended and then curled back touching the bottom left side while up against my face" (which is the transmission killer on my first generation iPhone. If our connection breaks up, there is no reason to assume it was an accident.)

It seems likely that plain old electrical conductivity is in play here. Some people's skin conducts much better than others and anecdotally tape insulation helps. So that is a different mechanism from most(all?) other phones.

Like my idol, Léon Theremin, I will use this "defect" to develop a special app that allows the user to play music by stroking and caressing his/her iPhone on its various "sensitive" radio receptors.

Then we can sit back and wait for our very own Clara Rockmore to emerge...

I've always held my 2G at the top of the phone, primarily to avoid attenuating the wi-fi noticeably, but also to reduce the energy being absorbed by my hand.

Carrying this over to the iPhone 4.0 appears to completely avoid this 'problem'.

It's a shame, because the phone is fantastic and in the areas of magazine-like screen quality, running multiple apps, speed and build, has exceeded my expectations wildly.

This is sad in a way: people just spent a few hundred dollars on a shiny (literally) device and now they need to tape it in a very visible place so that it works consistently.

All this fuss over the perceived problem of the antenna, it reeks of premature optimization. Has anyone actually observed this being a problem while on a phone call? I'm not talking bars, since bars are a very loose indication of signal strength.

Phone calls generally work even with very bad reception. More important here is the data transfer over 3G which has been observed to slow down significantly. The "death grip" is exactly how you would hold the phone when browsing.

My iPhone 3GS (and probably all of them) have a somewhat similar problem: when I hold it at the bottom I cover the microphone with my palm and the other side can't hear me. When they start asking me to repeat, I change the way I hold it. Not sure how I discovered this is the problem, maybe other people think they have poor reception.

But there was no media hype about this one. Maybe if Steve Jobs didn't mention the innovative antenna design, no one would have noticed.

Marco Arment also has a solution: http://www.marco.org/733115343

For those who want to make a clearly visible statement about their antenna woes. :)

I hate it when someone on the Internet starts being practical.

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