Antenna Gate

Ok, I watched the press conference last week and I have been using an iPhone for 26 days now.  I have spent half of that time with and without the bumper case on my phone to see if I can tell a difference.  Remember I upgraded from an iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4 so the extra processor speed, upgraded display, upgraded storage, memory, cameras, and design made the new iPhone 4 a huge step up from my old phone.  So after one month of use how does the new phone stack up and is the antenna issue really an issue at all?

First I can say with our without the bumper I drop fewer calls than I did with the iPhone 3G.  I have to date only dropped 2 calls.  Which is far better than I have had in the past or with other carriers.  Now there happens to be an AT&T cell tower close to my home and our office has repeaters in the building.  Most of the time when I am out and about I notice I get between three and five bars with the new algorithm Apple included in the iOS 4.0.1 upgrade.  

As a side note if you are on a 3G or 3Gs iPhone I highly recommend upgrading to iOS 4.0.1, it makes the phone much faster than the 4.0 upgrade was except for loading text messages seems to be a little slow still but the email issues have been resolved and virtual keyboard lag was resolved.  

I live in a city with pretty good AT&T 3G coverage.  There are of course a few weak spots but for the most part it works pretty well.  That is the most important thing for a phone.  If you live in an area where you don’t get good AT&T coverage then the iPhone may not be the phone for you.  I will go in depth next week on this topic and options for iPhone users that live in weaker coverage areas. 

So Apple introduced the iPhone 4 with new features like an external antenna built into the metal band around the phone.  They introduced a more sensitive radio chip that can pick up weaker signals than the previous iPhones.  They attempted to make the iPhone a better phone and for the most part succeeded but there were a few people who complained loud about the external antenna and now that Apple has seen a string of successful products the media seems to be dying to see them fail at something.  A Microsoft exec even went so far as to call iPhone 4 Apple’s Vista.  Well, the difference between Vista and iPhone 4 is of course people are buying the iPhone 4.  

Is there signal attenuation when you cover the phone with your hand?  The so called iPhone death grip.  Yes, the signal does drop from reports about 20 db.  Now at home or in most locations where I have five bars it doesn’t impact me at all.  I have never dropped a call because of how I was holding the phone.  If I am in a weaker signal location where I am getting say three bars I might drop to one bar.  But I can still make and receive calls.  

The bars on a phone are a throw back to the days of analog phones when they told you how strong a signal you were receiving.  It would tell you if your call was going to be clear or if you might have a lot of static in your call.  Today all of our calls are digital just 1’s and 0’s.  The important predictor of completing a call successfully is the bit error rate (BER) which isn’t displayed on the phone at all.  I am not saying the bars are useless they do give you a little information.  How strong is the signal coming in gives you a rough prediction of your call quality over time.  If you have five bars you are less likely to drop the call than if you have only one or two bars.  Also if you have five bars you will use less battery power than if you only have one bar.  GSM phones will increase or decrease their output power based on the strength of the incoming signal in order to save battery power.  

The important thing is it’s not the number of bars that are the most important thing, it is do you have good coverage in the area you want to use your phone and can you complete those calls?  Testing has indicated the iPhone does a better job of pulling in a weak signal and making it usable than its predecessor that coupled with the detuning of the antenna when you hold it in your hand could account for a slight increase in dropped calls.  Fewer people using cases can as well.  

Apple has offered free bumper cases through September 30th and refunds to all users who bought a bumper for their iPhone 4 to make up for the issue.  They are reevaluating at the end of September to decide what the permanent fix should be or to keep giving away the bumpers.  Rumors seem to indicate they are looking at a process to Anodize the bands to put a layer of insulation between the users hand and the antenna to solve the problem.  

Why didn’t Apple see this in their early testing?  Well for one look how phones are tested in a testing chamber.  They are usually clamped into holder and held out in the room and tested.  When a human test subject is used to test the phone how are they holding the phone?  Do they tests different grips and left or right-handedness?  I bet they will start doing that now if they haven’t in the past.  

When the iPhones were field tested they were placed in cases to make them look like 3Gs phones so the users field testing never came in contact with the antennas when they are off campus .  On the Apple campus they have AT&T and Verizon towers right there so a strong signal you don’t see the attenuation problem.  So it is possible they didn’t really know about it until there were over a million phones in the field and they started getting data back from AT&T about dropped call rates.  It is also possible they knew but didn’t think it would be a big issue until the phone was in users hands.  Either way Apple is taking steps to deal with it now.  By offering full refunds within 30 days to those who aren’t happy so far the return rate has been about 1.7%.  They have also offered the free bumpers to customers as an option as well.  

RIM, Nokia, and Motorola weighed in on Monday criticizing Apple for dragging them into the issue by demoing the same affect on other phones and denying their phones suffered the same problem the iPhone does.  

First Nokia includes instructions on their phones how to hold it properly for the best reception.  While their PR people say they put antenna design above all other considerations when designing a phone.  Second a good friend of mine has a Droid phone and was suffering from dropped calls.  She asked me about this antenna issue and I was explaining where the antenna is located on her phone and she happened to mention she gets a lot of dropped calls and happens to hold her phone at the bottom where the antenna is located.  As an experiment she tried modifying her grip on the phone and she has not been dropping calls since.  So any company that says they do not have a problem with reception based on how you hold the phone is full of it.  This is a problem with physics and short of moving back to a mast type of antenna nothing is going to completely solve the issue yet.  The first Star-Tac cell phones had a pull up antenna and the engineers knowing some people wouldn’t extend the antenna installed a helical antenna inside the phone and a switch on the antenna.  If the mast was extended the mast antenna would be used and the helical turned off.  If the mast wasn’t extended the helical would be used instead.    

Every cell phone is a radio with an antenna and software to connect to a network of towers.  It is a complex process that few including myself fully understand and it is a miracle it works for the most part.  The iPhone is an excellent phone and if you live in a good AT&T coverage area a competent device.  If you don’t have good AT&T coverage it might not be the best phone for you.  

So long to the Microsoft Kin after only being out about a month Microsoft killed it off due to poor sales we hardly new ye.  So long also to the Google G1 Phone Google just announced this last week it is going away with no plans for a G2 replacement, that is disappointing.  So long Droid and hello Droid X  it seems like you were only around about 8 months before being replaced.  Thanks to Apple for kicking off a mobile computing revolution and thanks to Android and the others for keeping Apple pushing forward and improving the technology.  This is truly an exciting time to witness the advances in technology and I can only imagine what the next five to ten years will bring.

As far as Antenna Gate goes, if you like your iPhone get one, it is a great upgrade.  If you like your Droid or G1 and don’t want to deal with AT&T stick with what you have.  If you have a Palm Pre, well I would look for a better phone perhaps check out the HTC Evo if you are in one of the few areas with 4G coverage.  If you can live with AT&T and you want a great easy to use smart phone then come on over to the iPhone we have lot’s of great apps and all the iPhone owners are always happy to share their favorite apps and talk with a fellow iPhone owner and Apple strives to keep their customers happy despite having to use AT&T as a carrier.    

iPhone 4 First Look

In 2007 Apple changed the smart phone market with the first iPhone. In 2008 they revised the iPhone and rolled out the App Store and developers responded by creating more than 200,000 applications to date. in 2009 the iPhone added video recording, got faster, more memory and a few other new features but nothing earth shattering. Now in 2010 Apple really did redefine the smart phone market again with iPhone 4.

The first thing you notice on the iPhone 4 is the weight of the handset when you first pick it up. The weight feels perfect it is more of a substantial tool than just another phone. The glass and metal looks like art, the feel is solid, and it is very comfortable in your hand.

The first thing you notice when turning the phone on is the new Retina Display is stunning. The higher resolution and In Plane Switching LED display lights up fast and is very bright even in direct sunlight making it easy to read. The 326 pixels per inch make the pixels so small most people can’t see them and images and text look like laser prints instead of images on a screen. None of the online photos did justice to the clarity of this new display. So far no other smart phone maker is using a screen with this many pixels per inch.

Once you swipe your finger to unlock the phone you get a feel for the speed of the A4 processor and the benefit of putting 512 Megabytes of RAM into the phone. While we didn’t see an expected jump in storage capacity the extra speed makes the phone far more capable than it’s predecessors. Even the 3G and WiFi is faster on this new phone requiring you to wait less time to download information and there is plenty of room for network performance to improve as AT&T upgrades its network.

Pictures and Video are amazing on this phone putting it nearly on par with higher resolution point and shoot cameras. The 5 megapixel sensor using larger pixels making it more sensitive to light takes great photos in lower light conditions and the bright LED flash on the camera helps with even the lowest lighting situations. More megapixels doesn’t always mean better images just bigger files. The camera can also shoot very clear 720p HD video so you can now leave the Flip cameras at home and use your iPhone to shoot, edit and upload videos right from your phone. If you are going to be shooting longer videos you may still want to bring the FlipHD camera along so you don’t use up all of your storage on your phone. With Music, HD Movies, Data, applications, books, PDF’s and Podcasts it seems as though the 32 Gigs of storage goes pretty quick.

The larger battery and more efficient A4 processor has helped the iPhone 4 battery life quiet a bit. Despite the fact I use the phone more and for longer periods of time I can make it through an entire day and not have to recharge the phone. Under very heavy usage on a Friday I got about 15 hours of usage before needing to recharge. Some of that time was a 2.5 hour Plants vs. Zombies marathon. On Saturday I spent a lot of time on the phone and using bluetooth as well as watching videos and showing off the phone to friends and I got another 15 hours of usage and without the gaming marathon the battery still had about 30% charge remaining when I started recharging it. I didn’t get the kind of battery life Engaget described but I had the bluetooth, wifi, 3G all turned on. With a little power management or just recharging while I am in my car or at my desk I don’t think battery life will ever be a problem again for the iPhone.

There has been some controversy surrounding the iPhones new antenna built into the frame of the phone and the talked about iPhone “Death Grip” that supposedly makes you drop calls. First I tested this at home with the bumper case removed from my phone and was unable to duplicate the issue. I live in a neighborhood that is close to an AT&T cell tower and I get 5 bars no matter what I do in the house. If I move to a location where I only have three bars and try this I do see a drop in signal strength but I am not sure if it is because of how I am holding the phone or other factors in the environment that might be influencing the phone. This isn’t a new phenomenon. All cell phones loose reception when you cover the antenna with something that can block signals like your hand or your head. To make sure I don’t have a problem and to protect my phones glass surfaces I opted for the Bumper case and in four days of using my iPhone I haven’t had a dropped call yet which says a lot since that has been a problem with AT&T for many years.

With iOS 4 on the iPhone we now have multitasking. While for the last couple of years I didn’t think I needed multi-tasking it is again a time saver. Saving the state of the application when I switch to something else and letting me come back right to where I was when I return saves me time in waiting for the application to be ready to go again and doesn’t compromise battery life. Also adding folders allows us to install more applications on our phones without loosing having some applications only available through a spotlight search. Initially the iPhone could support 144 applications. Then iPhone OS 3 came out and we could go up to 176 applications plus the ones that didn’t fit on a screen could be accessed from Spotlight. Now with folders we can have 2,112 applications visible on our phones. Again if you have more than that first of all how do you use them all and second you can find the ones not visible through a folder in Spotlight.

The background images you can choose for your lock screen and your desktop really give you something nice to look at while you are using your phone.

One of the most compelling and phone new features got a lot of ridicule from the tech and blog community when it was first announced and everyone criticized and said “who would want to video conference from your phone?” But now we have Face Time. While you are on a WiFi network you can call another iPhone 4 user and see them face to face and carry on a conversation with that person. It is great to see someone when you are talking to them and over WiFi the video is clear and the audio quality is excellent. You can even switch from the front to the rear camera at the touch of a button to show the caller what you are seeing or press it again so they can see you. The era of the Jetson’s have arrived. While we still don’t have our flying cars we do finally have an easy to use video chat. Apple has submitted Face Time to become an open standard and already relies on other open standard protocols to work. Now Apple needs to make Face Time work not with just iPhone4 but with iChat AV and encourage other vendors like Skype, AIM, Microsoft, and others to adopt Face Time as a standard and use an Open Directory system to allow us to talk with one another.

The potential for our communication to be revolutionized if anyone, anywhere and see and hear each other anytime, whether we are at our computers on our desks, our laptops in a cafe, or our iPhones at the beach. To be able to look someone in the eye and have a conversation even if they are thousands of miles away is a very powerful tool. Plus when you look our caller in the eye you know they are paying attention and not distracted by one of the many other devices that now vie for our attention in our lives today.

iBooks now runs on iOS4 and on the Retina Display on the iPhone4 it is easy to sit and read a book while having lunch or standing in line. The text is so clear and easy to read even at smaller font sizes it is no problem to look at the screen for long periods. When I got my first Amazon Kindle last year I started reading more because it was easy to carry several books around in a small lightweight device. A year later the iPad was introduced and then I could do far more than just read books and now with the iPhone supporting iBooks I can read anytime anywhere even if I didn’t bring my Kindle or iPad along with me. I can open any electronic book in my library read a few pages and when I get back to my Kindle or iPad they update to the most current page I have read and I can pickup where I left off. Just like with Podcasts, Movies, and AudioBooks on iTunes, iPad, and iPhone.

In short the iPhone4 has revolutionized Smart Phones and mobile communications again and it will likely be sometime before handset manufactures catch up to Apple again. By then who knows what will be coming next but stay tuned and we will find out.