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Comment by jamesbritt | Hacker News Reader

    But the central question that was in everyone's head 
    before the press conference - "Is the iPhone 4 a dud" 
    - has, well, evaporated.

That was never the central question in anybody's head. No one thought the phone was a dud.

A more common question was, will Apple own up to making an avoidable design flaw? Look around the Web at the responses to the press conference and decide just what questions have evaporated, and what new ones appeared.

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I disagree, you must have been reading different stories to me.

There was a lot of vitriol directed at Apple, and a lot of people were saying it was a huge problem for them. People are still saying it now. Check out the recent slate article posted here, or techcrunch, or response from HTC/ BB/ Nokia. A lot of people (in the media) do not see this as resolved.

I am slowly learning to hate the media all over again.

Why? It's a badly designed phone. There's a reason every other cellphone has an internal antenna. Good on people for calling Apple out over the lousy design, failure to test properly, and so far, the failure to take responsibility. If I had bought an iPhone 4, I'd have accepted a refund. Bumpers? case? eugh come on.

If the vast majority of the people think it's overall a much better phone than the 3GS, is it really a badly designed phone?

I don't own one, but the whole antenna thing sounds massively overblown by a press hungry for some controversy. Anandtech went so far as to say that the phone was better overall in marginal reception areas than the 3GS.

Mine was delivered Friday. One of the first things I did was to try the death grip. To get the signal to degrade I had to hold it in a position essentially embedding in the lower left corner of the phone in my palm while holding it unnaturally tight. Then there was only a single bar loss in signal. Holding the phone in a comfortable left or right handed position had no effect on the signal. If there would have not been the news around it I would have never noticed it. Even the technology press seems to be degenerating to Fox.

That's because you must be in an area with relatively high signal strength. The signal bars on the iPhone are very non-linear. If you had been in an area with marginal signal strength (but still enough to read 5 bars), holding your phone normally would be enough to drop several bars.

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

This is fixed in the new update. The bars are now linear.

How can they be linear? There's an unbounded range of signal strength. Right next to a very high powered tower, it's going to get better signal strength than right next to a microcell, for example. My impression was that they were just shifting the scale so that more instances would be <5 bars.

That's a false dichotomy. It can still be better than a 3gs overall AND have a serious design flaw. Technology has moved on and made the 3gs obsolete in so many ways that it can easily move the overall experience to a new high watermark while still having a serious flaw.

If it gets better reception than the 3GS in some situations and worse in other situations, how is that a serious design flaw? What makes it a flaw rather than simply a design trade off?

I've had many high tech devices way more flawed than this and they didn't get 22 days of coverage, a press conference by the CEO, or some free fixes. Hell exploding laptop batteries got less coverage than this! I don't even own a iPhone (and don't intend to get one) but these comments are over the top.

The parent said it was a badly designed phone, I was just saying that since everyone seems to be much happier with it than the predecessor, even in the area of the flaw, it's not a bad design. I don't see a false dichotomy.

And the 3GS is not a completely obsolete phone at all, except by gadget addict standards.

Overblown or not, the product still have the flaw. I think what the media expected is Apple to admit the flaw, and not pushing the responsibility to customer by holding it another way or buy bumper.

In auto industry, Toyota, Honda and others admit their product have flaw, and do a recall.

In the auto industry, if they don't recall the product when there's a big flaw, people die. It's a bit different. This seems like the A/C buttons on a Toyota Camry being finicky and annoying. Not worth a recall, or the attention that's been paid to it.

Jobs admitted there was a flaw, just as there is for all phones. Perhaps they should recall all phones, and we can go back to having a pull out antenna, or large radio source closer to our heads?

The way I see it, they took a chance on a different design, that produces better results most of the time, but has an unfortunate side effect that it causes a problem when held a certain way.

The reception problem when holding a phone a particular way happends on lots of phones out there, this was just never relised before. If you were using a Nexus on or bb 9700, you would lose a call and blame it on the network or the lift. Now, you might check how you are holding the phone.

1) They’re offering refunds

2) How can you call it a “badly designed phone” when you don’t have one? I have one. It’s great. Give it up already!

Its not a bad phone. I have an iPhone 4, and I am really impressed with it, actually I can't put it down. It has really great screen resolution, is much faster than other phones I have seen and combined with iOS4, multi-tasking, etc it makes a really good phone. The antenna issue only shows up in certain areas of reception.

I for one, am not sending my phone back...

"There was a lot of vitriol directed at Apple, and a lot of people were saying it was a huge problem for them. People are still saying it now. Check out the recent slate article posted here, or techcrunch, or response from HTC/ BB/ Nokia. A lot of people (in the media) do not see this as resolved."

Vitriol? Sure. But are these articles and posts primarily saying the phone is a dud? Seems at least half the articles I read point out the massive sales of the device, despite any perceived flaws.

So you're suggesting that the story over the last few days was never about a legitimate gripe, but was all along just eager Apple haters slavering over the prospect of a prostrate Steve Jobs?

This seems an odd reply to me. I don't think the parent suggests anywhere that there aren't legitimate gripes about the phone, just that it isn't a 'dud'. A dud is something which completely fails to operate - a bomb that doesn't explode, for example.

The iPhone 4 has a significant flaw, but many (if not most) people have found it to operate perfectly well. If you look at the testing done at Anandtech, for instance, the new iPhone actually does a better job with a weaker signal. This translates into getting reception in places where it wasn't available before. Obviously, there is also a substantial design flaw in the antenna design, but the phone still operates properly for most people.

Even Consumer Reports, who obviously had serious issues with the antenna problem, still rank the iPhone 4 as one of (if not the) best smartphone on the market. That doesn't sound like a dud.

P.S. Just to clarify, I think Apple's response throughout this ordeal has been poor, and they obviously made mistakes in testing. But, like the parent post, I just wouldn't call the phone a dud.

I'm sure you got my point. The amount of press that this topic has generated is really only warranted if this flaw were a deal breaker, meaning the release was a dud. Given the uptake, and the fact that signal quality for the phone is higher, and the tiny fraction of users affected by this easily manageable quirk, we have to look for some other explanation for the outcry.

In the forums that I visit, I've noticed that usernames I associate with being anti-Apple are far more likely to be concerned with Apple striking a suitably guilty tone.

Ah, I see now. Apologies for the confusion, sometimes the tone of a comment goes straight over my head!

No.

No, I think the perceived question in the media and in the largely non-owners of iPhone was exactly whether iPhone 4 was a dud. If Jobs didn't defuse that question, the iPhone sales had a potential of peaking much, much sooner than it will now because new customers would be willing to sit and wait.

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