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Comment by vecter | Hacker News Reader

I found the base antenna site (http://www.apple.com/antenna/) pretty enlightening.

Indeed, look at how they describe different phone models -- which of these are not like the others?:

  In our tests, iPhone 4 dropped from 3 bars to 1 bar
  In our tests, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 dropped from 5 bars to 1 bar
  In our tests, the HTC Droid Eris dropped from 4 bars to 0 bars
  In our tests, the Samsung Omnia II dropped from 4 bars to 1 bar
  In our tests, iPhone 3GS dropped from 3 bars to 1 bar

I noticed some time ago that they absolutely refuse to refer to their mobile devices using articles, and avoid personal possessives whenever possible. It's always "with iPhone, you can blah blah blah", never "with the iPhone", and rarely "with your iPhone". They exclusively refer to their product as if it were an abstract idea, never grounded in physical reality.

It was always something quietly infuriating before, but here they've intentionally tried to contrast themselves against their competitors.

Now, hold on a sec -- people refer to me without an article, and I consider myself quite firmly grounded in physical reality. The point being, they're looking to talk about these devices on a personal level... the way you talk about some_one_ in your life. This is likely just as distasteful as the scenario you describe, but I think it is more accurate.

So if this not just FUD. I wonder why all these companies obviously put the antenna in the wrong place. If your hand affects the signal strength through the case, you shouldn't put the antenna at the bottom of the phone, because that is where you hold it.

Also: "bars" is not a scientific unit.

See http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/6/24/apple-ip...

Also: "bars" is not a scientific unit.

Well, sure it is, if you're measuring the pressure of hot air.

Doesn't have to be hot.

It is due to regulations about radiation exposure to your head. With the antenna on the bottom, as all phones do these days, you don't get as much to your head, as if it was on the top of the phone.

Funny how movies there show that iPhone loses bars after gently holding by the base but you have to grab HTC Droid Eris really high and squeeze it like mad to get the bars down.

Just tried it on my 8330 curve. The signal strength goes down a couple of bars too.

my 3gs stays at full signal strength even when i cover it with two hands as hard as i can.

Ditto.

I noticed just now that my iOS 4.0.0 3G was at 4 bars. Lifting it slightly, I got up to 5. Holding the base, sandwiched between both hands, I managed to push it down to 2 bars (you have to wait for a bit, there seems to be a delay of five to twenty seconds between each step).

However, I have to wonder at this PR, changing the discussion from whether it is unusual to dropbars from how the phone is held, from whether it is unusually easy to miss-hold the iPhone 4.

I tried this on my 3GS at different places. Some places, the bars dropped from 5 --> 0. Others it went from 5 --> 3. In some other places, it didn't drop at all. It's pretty random, but the effect is certainly repeatable at the same location.

hmm, quicktime plugin to view those videos, really steve?

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