Jobs tells iPhone users to get a grip iPhone users having reception problems are just holding the phone wrong, according to Apple, which have released an official fingering guide for those who want to be able to make calls. The problem is those pesky users who insist on wrapping their fingers around the phone, specifically touching the side at the bottom left …
"This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."
Newsflash..... It ISNT a fact of life for every wireless device, infact very few wireless device have an antenna you can actually touch, and most put them well way from areas that may be interfered with. I guess they went for a clever design, which was scuppered by idiotic users choosing to hold their devices in a normal comfortable way.
Tools!
"This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."
Well it's not actually the same problem on all wireless phones, it's the iphone aerial in the metal band at fault and their design of this. How you hold an handset will make a difference yes but a normal handset a case won't help at all. The issue is pretty much a sort of shorting out of the wireless signal when flesh bridges one of the gaps between the band sections. One fix a freind has done is putting some scotch tape up the side of the phone to insulate & break the circuit.
Sorry steve it IS an design flaw.
It is a genius line! And to continue along that line, I can see a situation where a right-handed male would need to hold the phone in his left hand, and would also require signal for that errr video stream. But that's perhaps not appropriate here.
There's going to be a lot of frustrated iPhone4 owners out there.
"But it mainly seems to come down to hand size, with the larger span finding an iPhone harder to use (but, if rumour is to be believed, they'll have less need for an iPhone in the first place)."
In order to get the most from this punch-line, I think it should be properly explained to those that don't have the mental capacity to operate a phone without big buttons and or those that require someone else to make it "just work." The rumor in question is the correlation (oh yeah, big words...um "link") between large hands and a certain "male body part" being large as well. In which case, one would not need to compensate (oh big word again..."make up for") for being lacking in a certain "body part's" size, and thus, not have to own the fad fondle-slab.
Hopefully that clarifies the joke, so more than just Droid owners can see the mirth in it.
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"Apple might correctly point out that every phone suffers from this problem to a greater or lesser degree"
What's the word greater doing in there? I've never heard of any phone that suffers to the same degree, let alone to a greater degree.
Apple have spent a long time making UIs that function in an intuitive way, but it looks like this time they've made up for all of those years of doing it right by doing it wrong in a big way.
While it is true that picking up a phone will interfere with the signal a little, you certainly shouldn't lose 3 or 4 out of 5 bars of signal strength.
And isn't it normal to grip the lower left edge of the phone when using it? Left or right-handed it doesn't matter: either your finger or your palm will be there as it's the most comfortable way to hold the phone. Surely Apple can't be advocating getting some kind of RSI just to get better reception?
List of phones I've had in the last 9 years or so that did NOT exhibit this problem:
Nokia 6310i
XDA II
Nokia P900
XDA Orbit 2
Nokia E61
HTC Desire
List of phones I've had in the last 9 years or so that DID exhibit this problem:
...
"the 6310i manual does instruct users to avoid putting their fingers on the upper area of the rear (ooer missus etc.)"
I had a girlfriend give me that advice once, after which the reception got worse ... and the same goes for my actual phone (crazily? *) ;)
(* Well, maybe not. I have the same paragraphs in the manual [unsurprising, it's also a Nokia], despite which the signal reading *doubles* when held as shown how not to! I am in the Aire Valley right now though and I'd hazard that counts for something).
Ok, it may look "nice" having the aerial run round the outside of the device but if that entails the possibility/probablity of loss of reception if part of that aerial comes into contact with the person using it then it would seem pretty obvious that you engineer the design so that that part is in the least likely part of the case to be held and not the most likely place for right handed users.
Maybe its a cunning plan to launch the new Iphone 4R designed for right handed people in a few months time.
So the band around the outside is metal, the antenna, sure, but I'm sure they could find a way to put a tiny amount of clear lacquer or something on it, which still lets near 100% of signal through and looks the same, but crucially breaks the contact between skin and metal?
I'm going to patent that, quick!!
...everything the iPhone can't do, or does badly, is the customer's fault. In an apple-shaped world, the customer is always wrong.
I hope all iPhone customers listen to the word of Jobs and start holding their phones the way Cupertino dictate, which shouldn't be hard as they're used to accepting the Jobsian dictats on where they must buy apps and whether or not they can run Flash etc.
Suck it up, losers!
"the irritating habit of radio particles to act like waves makes things unnecessarily complicated"
While bringing in wave/particle duality earns Brownie points for thoroughness, for all practical purposes you might as well regard phone handsets as emitting radio waves and have done with it.
If you ever have so few photons in play that you need to consider them individually, you're so many orders of magnitude below having a usable signal there's no real point in bothering.
because of Planck's law
E = h f
with E the energy of a photon, H Planck's constant and f the frequency. Only at very short wavelengths (think visible light) do individual photons have a measurable effect (such as the photo-electric effect, explained by Einstein using Planck's law, which got him his Nobel prize (NOT relativity)). At radio wavelengths you have so MANY photons that the statistics of individual photons average out and only the wave behaviour is evident.
... is that it is on O2 mate. What a god-awful notwork that is. Only when my iPhone 3GS took its first breath of Vodfone 3G did it begin to perform for the first time in its short life! So absolutely no surprises there that the iPhone 4 phenomenon is even more expressed than it might be on any other network on this planet!
Don't send it back - get it supplied on another network.
Measured signal quality (as opposed to signal strength) has little to do with the actual network and more to do with cell and antenna design (both at the cell and handset) not to mention environmental considerations.
Even the slightest amount of digging will demonstrate that the issue affects all networks fairly equally; see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krt4aRqK5L4 for a demonstration on vodafone.
Having access to both Vodafone and O2, I find O2 in the north of England (particularly in rural areas) performs substantially better then Vodafone on simlar hardware. I'm now using a Galaxy S which is performing (signal wise) far better than my HT Desire does in the same areas on the same network. Horses for courses I'm afraid - up here I prefer to be on O2 and count myself lucky I have two options in terms of network because of my work mobile.
It's not just left-handers wo'll be affected. I'm right handed which means I always hold the phone in my left hand (just like you do in the video) because I use my right hand to dial numbers with. I don't then transfer it to my right hand just to have a conversation. Am I just wierd? Glad I didn't buy one of these things anyway, it's hard enough getting a signal where I live as it is...
I'm interested to know if you're by any chance older. I (and most people I know) do one handed thumb dialing, holding the phone as one might a remote control. I know one girl who does two handed texting (ie two thumbs for speed), but the only time I've ever seen anyone use two hands as in index finger and and cradle, is in 80's movies when dialing land lines. Just wondering.
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