Apple Solves Antenna Mystery

Apple has finally broken its silence after a tsunami of customers complaints, media coverage and a few lawsuits. The company has released an official statement today. But this statement says as if iPhone has the worst reception ever. How? Read on...(some sense of humor required)

In that statement, Apple says that 'gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones.'

Wow! Nice job, but we never heard of Android and Nokia customers complaining about bar drop. I Googled, but could not find an outcry against antenna problems in any other, even the least successful smartphones. I wonder if the iPhone 4 is the best phone ever why does it have the worst problem.

"...we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?"

Explanation is simple: Apple's loyal customer-base which sees no flaw in the company. Despite that loyalty some customers have filed lawsuits, now what can explain that?

Apple continues: "We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising."

Interesting, simple yet surprising. I never expect anything complicated and boring from Apple.

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place."

I am stunned too! I am poor at Maths, so I can't understand anything about a wrong formula. This statement is confusing for me. Apple statement is saying is that the reception of the iPhone 4 is in fact not as good as it shows.

To someone with a pea-brain like me it means : Apple's claim that the reception of iPhone 4 is better than previous generation phones is bogus as the high bars are formula fault – they do not reflect the 'real' reception.

"To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see."

This reminds me of a story where a guy calls up his representative to inform that the river is flowing above the danger line. The representative replied "Don't worry, we are raising the danger line."

Apple statement adds, “As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund."

Now, where are the images of people lined up to return the faulty iPhone?

On a serious note, Arstechnica has raised questions about this statement, "Apple's statement doesn't address the very real issue of handsets losing up to 24dB of signal strength from simple bridging two of the phone's antennas—which is either a serious hardware flaw or another error in how the phone detunes its antennas."

If you think this blog is joke, what made you think Apple is serious?