Antennagate

Apple had their press conference and as many thought the main topic was the issue of the antenna. My breakdown of the event: Apple loves their customers, all cell phones have antenna problems, the iPhone4 has the best antenna of any iPhone, Apple customers are calling AppleCare at a rate of .55%, returns of iPhone 4s are 1.7%. Oh, I almost forgot, Apple called out HTC, RIM, and Samsung. HTC and RIM have fired back, not really agreeing with Steve and Samsung has yet to respond.

Items that drew my attention the second time I watched the press conference. How many times did Steve say: “Hard data”, “phones aren’t perfect” and “smartphones have weakspots”?

“Hard data”: 5

“phones aren’t perfect”: 4

“smartphones have weakspots”: 6

I didn’t expect such repetition in a 15 minute presentation. We heard one of the above statements every 56 secs, it seemed much more often.

I also take issue with the reported call in rate .55%. Steve reported this as the number of customers calling in, not the number of phones each customer might have that is experiencing or concerned about the antenna issue. I think its reasonable that many iPhone 4 customers have more than 1 iPhone 4. Its also reasonable that some customers may have more than one iPhone4 and could be concerned about the antenna issue with each iPhone 4. So if the afore mentioned is reasonable and possibly true then the .55% is probably low.В  Further, how many users have heard about and experienced the antenna issue and didn’t call? I have to conceed Steve did say “hard data” and I am speculating.

During the event Jobs show three phones going from 5 bars on down to as many as no bars. He also said that all phone have this issue when they have “a relatively week signal”. To me 5 bars does not show a week signal, and all phone displayed during the even showed 5 bars. So which is it, is it attributed to a week signal and holding it with some sort of death grip, or just the death grip?

To sum up: Is it an issue? I believe that has more to do with personal experience than a global iPhone 4 problem. Is it a non-issue? Probably not, I suspect this will push antenna development, which benefits all consumers.В  I have said it before, regardless of the stance we should all be thankful for the innovation Apple brings to the market. Apple has substantially pushed the smartphone market into new space.

July 18, 2010 В· curtisvonlintel В· Comments Closed
Tags: , , ,  В· Posted in: Apple, BlackBerry, google, Phones