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Comment by dotBen | Hacker News Reader

I think Steve has handled this really well (I'm not a massive fan, but happy to acknowledge some smooth PR work going on when I see it).

Taking the line that other phones have the same issue was clever, but in reality it's actually only phones with metal cases that suffer this problem. The plastic cases on other phones (or the "bumper" outer-case in this solution) insulate the user from the circuitry, of course.

What's interesting is that most other top phones (EVO, Nexus One, etc) don't have metal in the cases = no problems. Perhaps Apple needs to realize metal isn't a great material to make un-grounded, wireless, hand-held products from?

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What's interesting is that most other top phones (EVO, Nexus One, etc) don't have metal in the cases = no problems.

Except the Nexus One does have this problem (to the tune of 17 dB of signal loss, according to Anandtech).

Holding naturally, Anandtech measured the iPhone 4 losing 19.8 dB vs the Nexus One 10.7 dB. Keep in mind that dB is logarithmic, so the iPhone 4 performs ~10x worse than the Nexus One in that test.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2

The reason that signal strength is measured in dB in the first place is because it corresponds linearly to actual performance based on distance. It is originally derived from the measurement of a signal needed to sustain an audible sound across X miles of telephone wire. Therefore, it's a bit disingenuous to base performance on the linear strength of the signal.

Except that mobile phones are wireless and are subject to inverse square law as far as signal is concerned.

Signal theory traditionally operates with log scale because it simplifies math greatly and makes graphs manageable. If you say have noise floor at -30dB, expressing it on a linear graph is not very convenient.

The Nexus One is a poor example.

It suffered it's own 3G related issues and also suffers similar signal degradation as the iPhone 4: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=0c0...

There was a little bit of buzz surrounding it, but never got quite the same exposure as the iPhone's problems. I'm pretty sure it's 3G problems made the gadget blogs though.

The EVO has the problem too. I have to go somewhere with a lower signal like a parking garage, but I can do it by covering the antenna just like the EVO manual says not to do (page 169):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/32516924/Sprint-HTC-EVO-User-Manua...

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