The iPhone 4…You can’t touch this! Literally! Apple’s pretty new iPhone they’ve been boasting about, doesn’t seem to like being touched much, and the beautiful (if easily discoloured) screen scratches too. Dear dear.
To be fair, the scratching issue only affects the more-clumsy user, and there are only a couple of reports about discolouration in the corner of the screen. However. they still don’t like being held, as sticky fingers are causing huge drops in signal strength. That’s pretty damn useful in a phone!
The problem was first noted by a reader on the MacRumors forum who provided a demonstration video:
iPhone 4 Reception Issue with Holding the Phone
Since then tech blog Gizmodo has been canvassing early-adopters and accumulated a bundle of examples showing, in almost every case, that touching the bottom of the phone leads to around three bars being dropped off the indicated signal strength (which only runs up to five). That’s pretty much most of the signal! Although it can also be noted that if you touch the glass your fine! Just don’t touch the metal bit that runs round the side.
Even worse, a speed test performed by one reader demonstrated the download connection dropped to less than a third (from 840Kb/sec to 263Kb/sec) when they picked up the phone, a drop which could be slightly mitigated through the use of a leather case.
Which brings us to the conspiracy part of the story – unlike previous iPhones, the latest model was launched along with accessories including the “bump case”, which (it appears) would provide enough separation to improve the signal significantly. Could it be a deliberate plan by Apple! It doesn’t seem like the thing they do as they like it to just “work” however, it’s hard to see how such a widespread problem got missed during development. Maybe it’s because it was lost to Gizmodo!
Radio modelling can get very complicated, and the plethora of radios and frequencies used by a modern mobile phone adds to that complexity. In the past companies such as Nokia were able to leverage their vast experience with radio to create phones that just worked better than the competition. More recently the commoditisation of the radio component has enabled lots more players to create acceptable kit, though it seems in this case Apple may have tripped up.
A few users may be seeing discolouration in the corners of their iPhone 4 screens (as reported by CNet), and some will manage to scratch them too (also reported by CNet), but the killer application for a mobile phone remains the ability to make phone calls, and it seems possible that in all the excitement Apple has forgotten that very small detail!
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