iPhone 4 antenna reception fix: real mass delusion or smart attempt to ‘relax’ our perception of the problem?
I just can’t come to terms with the latest official letter by Apple regarding the iPhone 4 antenna reception issue.
Basically it says that the problem is merely related to how the indicated signal strength is calculated. So, according to Apple, there is no real antenna reception issue, at least not more than other phones have in similar situations. It is just a matter of how the signal strength was calculated.
This can mean one of two things:
a) There is indeed no antenna reception issue; the behavior of antenna reception does not differ significantly from that of other phones in similar situations.
In this case some sort of mass delusion has built up among iPhone 4 users, probably fueled by all the attention in the media. They were just seeing much fewer signalbars on their phones than the reception quality was in reality. No real problem.
This is of course a possibility we shouldn’t directly dismiss (although it is very tempting to do so). There is a post at Mashable where signal attenuations for different phones in a few handgrip situations are compared. One of the conclusions is that although for a tight hand grip (not really natural) iPhone 4 performs worse than an iPhone 3Gs and a HTC Nexus One, it’s not a deal breaker: ‘Although the signal drops, which users will notice by looking at the signal bars, in many situations it won’t result in degraded performance.’
b) There is a real antenna reception issue.
In this case Apple seems to be trying to ‘relax’ our perception of the problem by changing the signal strength indication with a new formula and ‘…also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.’
Both options are not really satisfying to me. Unfortunately, I think, in the end a little bit of both is true…
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