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'Antennagate' Reactions: RIM, Nokia, Taiwanese Animation

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Apr 12, 2001
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On Friday, Apple held a press conference where they defended the iPhone 4's antenna design and presented data suggesting the issue was blown out of proportion. During a portion of their presentation, they demonstrated signal loss in other major phone manufacturers including devices made by RIM And Nokia.

Neither company took too kindly to the demos and both issued responses. RIM issued a statement to Crackberry.com which begins:
Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation.
Click to expand...
RIM claims Apple made design decisions they should stand by rather than pointing the finger.

Meanwhile, Nokia responded on a blog with a similar sentiment:
In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.
Click to expand...
Finally, this crazy Taiwanese video recreation of the entire "antennagate" incident provides a humorous look (via Gizmodo):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk&feature=player_embedded
Article Link: 'Antennagate' Reactions: RIM, Nokia, Taiwanese Animation
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/07/19/antennagate-reactions-rim-nokia-taiwanese-animation/
Nokia,RIM et al...

are all 100% correct.

this is an Apple issue, no one else's

dragging other companies in is just pathetic, but typically Apple.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-gb; Nexus One Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Wtf @ video?
 
Nokia and RIM are quite right to distance themselves from this, but I feel for Apple, because it seems that the problem isn't anywhere near as bad as the media are making out (the people I know with iPhone 4s don't drop calls, even when they touch the 'bad bit').

And it won't stop me getting an iPhone 4 as soon as I'm eligible to upgrade my 3Gs :) (unless the next iPod Touch is just as beautiful as the iPhone 4, then I may get that instead).
 
Cheap shot

I'm with RIM and Noikia on this one, it was a cheap shot to drag them in and neither company has signal problems like the iPhone. iPhones have always been a bit lacking in the actual phone department. What would have been interesting would be comparing the number of dropped calls between the iPhone 4 and these phones, rather than the 3GS.

I think Steve may have just started another media round that he could have avoided.
 
Can we all just get free bumpers :D

{QUOTE davesw ]
Videos: death grip on EVO, Droid Incredible, Nexus One, Galaxy 1, G1, etc.

* http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-kFc..._with_droid_x/

* Samsung I9000 Galaxy S: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LROTHrTR92k

* HTC Evo Signal Attenuation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pj2YBYTbag

* Samsung Galaxy 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

* Samsung Galaxy 2:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPCQdYtPihg

* Droid Incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaDE941PzQk

* Droid Incredible (With Network Extender in Room): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEQH...eature=related

* Nexus One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIA_lMwqJA

* Nexus One vs. iPhone (start at 1:29): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvMoV4_C4aA

* http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-kFc..._with_droid_x/

* Nexus One: http://posterous.com/getfile/files.p...n_-_iPhone.m4v

* Nexus One (after Google's update to correct): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2g5J4qPp54

* Nexus One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deCkjeHYT-g

* Android G1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CDaxhjUs9M

* "Major signal degradation when Nexus One is picked up" (N1 Thread on On this Problem): http://www.google.com/support/forum/...9184c33e&hl=en
 
Pfft

Silly asians. Congratulations on succeeding your currency. US will never gain back anything.
 
D 5 said:
Can we all just get free bumpers :D

Videos: death grip on EVO, Droid Incredible, Nexus One, Galaxy 1, G1, etc.
Click to expand...

None of those are the death grip. The death grip is wrongly named. You don't need to cup and grab the phone or hold it tightly. iPhone 4 requires the tip of 1 finger applied on the gap that resides at the lower left corner. That is what was coined death grip and that people have mistaken for having to grab and cup the phone tightly.

It was the wrong term to use in the first place. It should have been death touch.

Reposting those videos means nothing for other phones either, because as measured by Anand, the attenuation is much lesser, even for the Nexus One (10 db vs 20 db) and it requires much more effort on the user's part.

RIM and Nokia are right, Apple is wrong.
 
The video is brilliant

I'll make some time tonight to try to rip it and then translate it :)
 
That video is one of the most damning satires of the "Cult of Mac" I've ever seen. Chopping off the two fingers is a perfect parallel to Mr. Jobs original comments towards the signal issues.

I will be on line to get my iCrap 4 on 30 July though. My 3G is getting very long in the tooth.
 
I have the HTC Droid Eris on Verizon wireless and I couldn't understand steve's message. I always see 1-2 bars on my phone except for the few times i see 3-4. Even when my phone has 1-2 bars I still have little trouble with 3G speeds. Sometimes my phone will show no bars but will still load uncached information from Ebay bid timers and items searches that i do periodically over 3G. My phone never becomes unusable.

After I saw the conference, I tried to replicate the video and could not get the bars to drop at all no matter how i gripped it. I even tried to completely cover the top with 2 hands where it said the antenna was.
 
No lawsuit, no disagreement

Reading both of those statements shows that niether manufacturer is denying the evidence that Apple put forward or that the same issue can can be seen with the handsets shown in the Apple's video. They are, in effect, agreeing with Apple.

Simple fact, if Apple claimed that the issue effected all smartphones and specifically mentioned three big competitors but were, in fact, not telling the truth, they would be recieveing letters from Lawyers demanding a retraction. Clearly they were not telling lies. RIM's reaction is shamefull in its twisted wording.

"Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation."

Note the words "appear to be". They're commenting on how you might percieve the presentation while sounding as if they're making a direct statement. Had they intended to state that Apple was attempting to distrtort the public's understanding then they would have just said that. They didn't because they know Apple was not doing that and, as such, that statement would have been a lie. They're basically agreeing that what Jobs said is true.

Lets all just stop freaking out now shall we? Jobs has said his piece, nobody is suing him because they know what he said was true. I can't wait until this has all gone away so we can get back to something that resembles the real world.
 
archipellago said:
Nokia,RIM et al...

are all 100% correct.

this is an Apple issue, no one else's

dragging other companies in is just pathetic, but typically Apple.
Click to expand...


Well, I think the PR problem is Apple's but I think the technical problem is everyone's. Not one of them have said what Steve Jobs said is actually false. If Steve had lied they would have sued, no question. Nokia's response even confirms what he said. So, Nobody thinks he's lying. And if, from that, we can assume what he said is true, why are people still saying it's an iPhone 4 problem. Since this 'story' broke I have tried every phone that comes into my home (I have a poor reception where I live) and they all do this to some extent. I don't have an iPhone 4 but I'm planning on getting one in the very near future. This is a non issue for me. I think the people still moaning about this are just riding the backlash bandwagon. I'm not just being a fanboy. If RIM, Nokia had come out and said 'Steve lied and is wrong' I wouldn't have wrote the above and would be questioning the validity of Steve's words (even though my own tiny experiment seems to indicate that all phones do this). But I think Apple's competitors are basically saying 'We have been in the business a lot longer than Apple, have spent millions on antenna R&D and we still have this problem. Please Apple, keep this information to yourself as it is your product that has brought it to the fore'. Please let me know if I've missed anything as I'm confused by peoples response to this other than backlash fever.
 
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