Occam's razor, the bumper, and the iPhone 4 - A theory...

[Geckotek]

Guess you never had a teacher or a professor try to engage you in a discussion of something with examples, anecdotes, going every which way and covering all the bases several times over, instead of just saying "2+2=4, and that's class for today."

Imagine how schools would be if we tossed textbooks at students and said "Ok, that's it, read it cover to cover, you'll have one test tomorrow and that'll be the school 'year' - pass or fail."

I wonder how much people would learn that way... I mean, all the answers are there in the textbooks, right?

As for the ending of the movie: I'm not the one that spoils it... another poster did, and I explained why I didn't spoil it.

Sure I did, but this isn't a college course. The fact is that what you're discussing isn't some deep dark intellectual mystery.

 

[pooryou]

It's a decent theory, but to me the spirit of Occam's Razor suggests:

If they really did create the bumper to solve this 'problem' then they would have included it in the box (if not pre-installed as part of the phone itself). It wouldn't have been hard to predict the backlash, and it wouldn't cost that much. They could still have a market selling other colors, just include black or whatever. If they had presented it as 'part' of the phone, nobody would have ever questioned it.

 

[Ronnoco]

I liked Contact...

 

[br0adband]

It's a decent theory, but to me the spirit of Occam's Razor suggests:

If they really did create the bumper to solve this 'problem' then they would have included it in the box (if not pre-installed as part of the phone itself). It wouldn't have been hard to predict the backlash, and it wouldn't cost that much. They could still have a market selling other colors, just include black or whatever. If they had presented it as 'part' of the phone, nobody would have ever questioned it.

There ain't no profit in that. If they were going to do something at the factory they might have gone the coating route which is actually the simplest solution of all (and could still be a part of this whole thing, actually).

But the Bumper? Guaranteed profit, minimal expensive, elegant practical solution.

And it comes in multiple colors!!! SELLING POINT, SELLING POINT!!!

 

[pooryou]

There ain't no profit in that. If they were going to do something at the factory they might have gone the coating route which is actually the simplest solution of all (and could still be a part of this whole thing, actually).

But the Bumper? Guaranteed profit, minimal expensive, elegant practical solution.

And it comes in multiple colors!!! SELLING POINT, SELLING POINT!!!

I addressed that though, they could still sell other colors.
Not to mention, the revenue from these is trivial in the grand scheme of things.

 

[br0adband]

I addressed that though, they could still sell other colors.
Not to mention, the revenue from these is trivial in the grand scheme of things.

I've speculated on the Bumper's actual cost to manufacture at about $.20 in quantity - some have issues with that but I've seen numbers for a manufacturer of actual "full body" cases that use more actual material in the product itself (and therefore "cost" more to produce) and those cases that wrap around the entire iPhone 3GS and only leave the display itself visible (the sides and the back are totally covered save for the necessary holes as required) and it worked out to $1.50 cents USD per case and that's the finished product, in the retail box as well meaning the cost of the manufacturing of the case was included as well.

I know someone in the finance dept at one of the biggest accessory/case makers for iPhones and just had to ask him "How much does such a case cost?" once and he offered up the info...). He noted that the price on the cardboard box and the plastic inserts inside the box, the printing and everything related to the retail box were double the cost of manufacturing the actual case itself. The box the case came in was more expensive to produce than the case itself.

Having said that, Apple's Bumper is probably going to cost less because a) it's less actual material to manufacture, and b) the packaging is dirt cheap - a simple blister pack with some sheet cardboard backing, not a full blown box, plastic inserts, etc etc.

I'll revise my estimate to say maybe a buck, absolute max cost to manufacture, start to finish, and then look at the $29 retail price and wham... 2,800% profit.

Trivial, eh? Is that why they're sold out? Or would the simplest explanation for that be Apple is withholding them to make folks restless and rabid?

</some_speculation_going_on>

 

[pooryou]

Yeah the revenue from those is trivial for a company the size of Apple. They would never consider it worth the PR grief just for a few extra bucks, especially when that could be preventing some people from buying the phone itself, which is what they really want.

I don't think them being sold out has any relevance on whether the revenue is trivial to Apple or not.

 

[alFR]

Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one

The same principle would seem to suggest that the antenna engineers at Apple are at least as smart and well-trained as any of us. What's your theory on how they completely forgot everything they knew about antenna design while making the iPhone 4? Surely if it's that obvious a mistake, at least one person on the team would have thought "oh, hang on, how well will this work with the antenna exposed on the outside where people can touch it"?

While my firsthand experience is somewhat extreme (killing mine with a fingertip takes less than a minute, even standing under a cell site)

I'm not sure I understand why it would take this long. Surely if you short out an antenna, it's shorted straight away, yes? So how does it take a minute for the signal to fail? Similarly, if the problem is attenuation, why would it take that long? It's not like the absorbtion capacity of your hand increases over time, is it?

But the simplest fact of all is: radiation of any kind tends to have negative effects, so...

I don't think it's as simple as that: you need to consider duration and level of exposure, how much energy the radiation has, whether it's ionising or non-ionising, etc.

 

[br0adband]

As I stated earlier, it's more believable that a mistake (or several mistakes) happened during the latest stages of production and testing that could be the reason(s) behind the issues so many of us are having than there weren't any mistakes at all.

Look at any video out there or read any report by anyone having the issue(s) similar to mine (or should I say mine are similar to theirs... weird) and they'll all state what happens is almost exactly the same, give or take a couple of seconds. Need a video to see exactly what happens with mine? Here's one - it's not my video, but I was pointed to it by arn (thanks again, arn) since I couldn't find one that showed precisely what my iPhone 4 does because of a fingertip:

http://vimeo.com/12864890

If I were to make a video of my own iPhone 4 demonstrating the particular problems I'm having, it would look almost like that one, more or less.

The radiation comment was a simple statement, don't tear it apart for semantics or pure technical accuracy, will ya, geez. Technically it is true - your own question could be offered as proof. Yes the negative effects would be mitigated by many factors such as those that you mentioned, the basic premise of the statement is still accurate.

 

[alFR]

As I stated earlier, it's more believable that a mistake (or several mistakes) happened during the latest stages of production and testing that could be the reason(s) behind the issues so many of us are having than there weren't any mistakes at all.

Or that it's at least partly a software issue. I still don't believe that a team of trained engineers would miss something as basic as this with the hardware: there has to be another explanation, like perhaps a bug in the baseband firmware.

Need a video to see exactly what happens with mine? Here's one - it's not my video, but I was pointed to it by arn (thanks again, arn) since I couldn't find one that showed precisely what my iPhone 4 does because of a fingertip

That would suggest it's an issue with interaction/shorting between the 2 antennae (which might be fixable in firmware if it's to do with the phone having trouble frequency locking) rather than attenuation, wouldn't it, given that the signal appears unaffected when he wraps his hands around the phone but goes down when he covers the band?

 

[br0adband]

Or that it's at least partly a software issue. I still don't believe that a team of trained engineers would miss something as basic as this with the hardware: there has to be another explanation, like perhaps a bug in the baseband firmware.

That would suggest it's an issue with interaction/shorting between the 2 antennae (which might be fixable in firmware if it's to do with the phone having trouble frequency locking) rather than attenuation, wouldn't it, given that the signal appears unaffected when he wraps his hands around the phone but goes down when he covers the band?

Yes, yes, certainly yes, and definitely yes, and yes all that was covered in the posts in this thread.

Nice when other people can see things and think just like you ain't it?

(and no, that doesn't mean we're starting a cult where we all "Think Alike" either)

 

[alFR]

Yes, yes, certainly yes, and definitely yes, and yes all that was covered in the posts in this thread.

Nice when other people can see things and think just like you ain't it?

(and no, that doesn't mean we're starting a cult where we all "Think Alike" either)

Yeah. I'm not sure though why are you saying in your sig that you think it's defective because of design (which would make most people think of hardware) rather than because of a probable bug in the baseband? Of course you could take "design" to mean hardware/software interaction as well, I suppose...

 

[br0adband]

Yeah. I'm not sure though why are you saying in your sig that you think it's defective because of design (which would make most people think of hardware) rather than because of a probable bug in the baseband? Of course you could take "design" to mean hardware/software interaction as well, I suppose...

It's a symbiosis with the iPhone 4, as with most any device. It's not one (meaning hardware) or the other (meaning software), it's both, hence it's the phone. I have to put it that way so that people won't focus on it potentially being a network issue, aka AT&T or whatever. One guy created a thread about it potentially being AT&T related, could be something on their network, blah blah blah, and samcraig brilliantly pointed out "it's happening to people in the UK on O2 just the same" (or words to that exact effect, sorry if I misquoted him). Honestly I hadn't even put that aspect of it into my head when people started pointing a finger at AT&T...

I've stated many many times and I'll restate it again: if Apple can fix all the issues that myself and many other people from all around the world (basically) are having with a software update, fantastic, awesome, good job (!?!?). But then I always state that I don't believe the issues like specifically with the software on the phone.

I believe a lot of this will be falling on the redesigned antennas. If cellular phones could ever possibly benefit from contact with human skin, then why hasn't it been done before? I've asked people to show me any device used in any form of radio communications - any device of any kind - that a) allows for such contact to happen by design and b) gets improved performance because of it.

Can't be just a, can't be just b, it must be the combination of both a and b. So far, nobody has been able to do it for a wide variety of reasons, but with respect to cellular phones, it gets even more specific because cellular phones work by receiving and transmitting microwave energy, and as I've explained in posts in this thread, microwave energy has very unique properties and reactions when it comes into direct contact with organic tissue.

That's it in a nutshell. No other cellular phone has ever allowed the user to touch the antenna in a skin-on-metal fashion because it's simply not done, there's no magical formula that can overcome the signal attenuation just by touching such a device. Anand's antenna/signal testing should be lauded as "the proof" for all to see:

iPhone 3GS: antennas inside the case, no contact potential with human skin when held normally, barely any signal loss at all
Nexus One: somewhat higher amount loss, redesigned antenna, larger surface area, more attenuation because of holding it normally, still looking good however
iPhone 4: SWEET JESUS look at that attenuation, effectively 10x worse than the iPhone 3GS, skin-on-metal contact issue potential verified just by the results when you look at the difference with the iPhone 4 inside a case preventing the skin-on-metal contact

Oh, and the "death grip" or "Cupping Tightly" aspect? It's because you're literally "closing the gap" - the proximity of the organic tissue to the resonator, aka the microwave antenna(s), which is perfectly normal based on microwave energy propagation and how it reacts with organic materials.

Covered all this before, but I'm redundant...

I originally - after I got my iPhone 4 and so quickly discovered that it's a hand-held cellular phone that won't work as a cellular phone when it's held in my hand - had this in my sig:

"I believe the iPhone 4 is defective by design."

but I had several people point out that I'm making a claim there (even though I'm just stating a belief). They argued that my statement was that Apple designed the phone on purpose to be defective, and that I don't believe. I believe that a mistake or a series of mistakes, rookie errors, whatever the hell you wanna call them really, happened - for whatever reason, they happened and the iPhone 4's performance is potentially suffering because of it.

The "it" there is the redesigned antenna system, and because that exists the way it exists, that the phone is defective because of the design. Whether it was intentional - not much evidence to support that yet, but who knows - or not, the one fact remains above and beyond all others:

Hold the iPhone 4 in your hand normally, with skin-on-metal contact (and I'm not even focusing on the "spot" either) and you're going to encounter some pretty severe signal attenuation and degradation.

It's all part of the iPhone 4, hence it's the phone. It may not be a complete product-wide issue based on many factors, but so far there's more evidence to suggest that it's a design that is apparently be called "defective in actual use" than there is saying it's not.

So I appeased some folks and redid the sig line to say I believe it's defective because of the the design.

Does that cover it?

 

[carrotcloud]

It's a decent theory, but to me the spirit of Occam's Razor suggests:

If they really did create the bumper to solve this 'problem' then they would have included it in the box (if not pre-installed as part of the phone itself). It wouldn't have been hard to predict the backlash, and it wouldn't cost that much. They could still have a market selling other colors, just include black or whatever. If they had presented it as 'part' of the phone, nobody would have ever questioned it.

that would have changed way too many things for iphone 4.. if it becomes part of iphone 4 , apple would first have to admit the flaw.... AND THEN they would have to change specs of iphone 4 to include the bumpers, not so slick design anymore. Of course there's the profit issue too. And they probably knew not everyone will be effected, probably thought they could get away with just offering it as an option to those who are.

 

[Igantius]

..If you've ever seen the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster, etc, based on the Carl Sagan novel of the same name, you'll probably remember them making several scenes that focus around a scientific principle/theory known as "Occam's razor" and it's basically put in this way:

"The simplest explanation is tends to be the correct one." (or words to that effect as it is expressed in many different forms including the real actual untouched version which says: "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".

Although that’s a very interesting post and although that interpretation of Ockham’s razor is a very common one (there was an episode of The Shield that used it in the same way), it’s something of a misleading one.

William of Ockham, who the razor is attributed to, was arguing that when philosophical arguments (as this was his field) are put forward, then they should be kept as simple as possible and one should not create over elaborate and unnecessary explanations.

Radio’s 4, In Our Time has an excellent episode about William of Ockham – the academics discussing his life do a better job at explaining the razor (and how it has been misinterpreted) than Hollywood has to date.

 

[br0adband]

Radio’s 4, In Our Time has an excellent episode about William of Ockham – the academics discussing his life do a better job at explaining the razor (and how it has been misinterpreted) than Hollywood has to date.

Is that some documentary or TV show? US, UK, etc? I'd be quite interested in that if you can point me in the right direction, thanks...

 

[zub3qin]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

Is this how people write if they are on a coke or meth binge?

 

[paddyhazard]

I've speculated on the Bumper's actual cost to manufacture at about $.20 in quantity - some have issues with that but I've seen numbers for a manufacturer of actual "full body" cases that use more actual material in the product itself (and therefore "cost" more to produce) and those cases that wrap around the entire iPhone 3GS and only leave the display itself visible (the sides and the back are totally covered save for the necessary holes as required) and it worked out to $1.50 cents USD per case and that's the finished product, in the retail box as well meaning the cost of the manufacturing of the case was included as well.

Everyone speculating on various costs of production fail to compare quality control and tolerances. Those cheap cases from china have no quality control and are crap. Look at the build quality on apple products, they must have a very high rejection rate and spend a lot of money on tooling to get such tight tolerances. Not that I'm disagreeing that those bumpers are nearly all profit and that apple have high mark ups in general but those people who say "the iphone only costs $$$ to produce don't know jack about product design and manufacturing. Simply getting the lowest costs from the bill of materials is not the total cost of the product and higher cost of material does not automatically equal higher cost of product.

On a side note, it makes sense that the most obvious reason for these bumpers (and therefore according to Occam's Razor, the correct solution) are a direct result of apple testing and connections being dropped and the glass shattering. Just before this iphone they removed screen protectors from apple stores saying their phones were already scratch resistant and have never designed their own case for an iphone before; now they're selling cases to protect your iphone.

 

[paddyhazard]

Also i'm guessing that they finalised the iphone packaging and were in the process of printing months before the WWADC so couldn't of just included it in the box, it would have to of been given out seperatly which would make it obvious that they were admitting a flaw with the phone.

 

[pooryou]

that would have changed way too many things for iphone 4.. if it becomes part of iphone 4 , apple would first have to admit the flaw.... AND THEN they would have to change specs of iphone 4 to include the bumpers, not so slick design anymore. Of course there's the profit issue too. And they probably knew not everyone will be effected, probably thought they could get away with just offering it as an option to those who are.

No, it hadn't been introduced yet, so they wouldn't have had to change anything.
BTW, this is not a theory of mine, I was simply applying logic to someone else's.

 

[alFR]

I have to put it that way so that people won't focus on it potentially being a network issue, aka AT&T or whatever.

Fair point.

No other cellular phone has ever allowed the user to touch the antenna in a skin-on-metal fashion because it's simply not done, there's no magical formula that can overcome the signal attenuation just by touching such a device. Anand's antenna/signal testing should be lauded as "the proof" for all to see:

To me that just makes it more improbable that no-one thought of this during development. Of course, anandtech also say that in real-world use the iPhone 4 is a better phone than the 3GS, holding signals much better in low-signal areas and with a better-performing antenna overall:

There's no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.

Does that cover it?

Sure. I guess we are just coming at the same thing from slightly different directions, which is fine. I guess we'll find out over the next couple of weeks how this pans out, be interesting to see what happens anyway.

 

[Arran]

Far away in an alternate universe with fewer words ......

I'd actually predicted back in mid May ( https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=9905790&#post9905790 )that the iPhone would come with a bumper-ish rubber-band thing. That was in response to seeing the un-bumpered Gizmodo pics and everyone's complaints about the ugly "un-Apple seams" and unprotected glass surfaces. I still reckon that's what Apple originally planned: Black bumper bundled with every 'phone at the $199/299 price point. It was part of the original design. (Colored bumpers were to be an optional upgrade)

Then the manufacturing costs unexpectedly jumped when the factory employees got their surprise 30% pay raise. But how to pay for it without losing margin?

1) Raise the price points to $229/329? (I'll bet Marketing killed that idea since they needed a sexy $1xx price point.)

2) Unbundle the bumper and charge $30 for it. Use the extra cash to pay factory employees.

I think they went for #2. IMHO

 

[lovetheduns]

Here's a video for ya:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUX1tPkP-gA

and it's just one of many...

And it is relative based on many factors.

If I hold my phone naked, with a death grip (and I mean a literal seized death grip), I will drop down to one bar on 3g and will then drop down to edge bars, and down to one... I can still make calls without dropping, I can still send texts, I can still access data via the net. IN order to do this, I have to really cover the impacted area with a tight grip. A light finger will do nothing.

Now, with a bumper-- I don't lose ANY signal, no matter how I grip, etc. The only dropped calls I have had so far are from my own error and actually touching the end call button by mistaken when changing hands or moving the phone, etc. In fact, I have lost far less calls on the new iPhone than I had with my 3gs -- and in areas where I KNEW i would lose service I have been able to keep it-- not the best quality for sure, but it does not drop the call.

 

[zub3qin]

Can the OP make his original thread into a pdf so I can put it in iBooks and read it over the next week? On second thought, I only have a 16GB iPad so it won't fit.

Never mind.

 

[lovetheduns]

I've speculated on the Bumper's actual cost to manufacture at about $.20 in quantity - some have issues with that but I've seen numbers for a manufacturer of actual "full body" cases that use more actual material in the product itself (and therefore "cost" more to produce) and those cases that wrap around the entire iPhone 3GS and only leave the display itself visible (the sides and the back are totally covered save for the necessary holes as required) and it worked out to $1.50 cents USD per case and that's the finished product, in the retail box as well meaning the cost of the manufacturing of the case was included as well.

I know someone in the finance dept at one of the biggest accessory/case makers for iPhones and just had to ask him "How much does such a case cost?" once and he offered up the info...). He noted that the price on the cardboard box and the plastic inserts inside the box, the printing and everything related to the retail box were double the cost of manufacturing the actual case itself. The box the case came in was more expensive to produce than the case itself.

Having said that, Apple's Bumper is probably going to cost less because a) it's less actual material to manufacture, and b) the packaging is dirt cheap - a simple blister pack with some sheet cardboard backing, not a full blown box, plastic inserts, etc etc.

I'll revise my estimate to say maybe a buck, absolute max cost to manufacture, start to finish, and then look at the $29 retail price and wham... 2,800% profit.

Trivial, eh? Is that why they're sold out? Or would the simplest explanation for that be Apple is withholding them to make folks restless and rabid?

</some_speculation_going_on>

Manufacture is one very tiny piece of the puzzle.

Have you ever had anything manufactured?? It is NOT easy.

I have a friend who makes jewelry and is produced in China-- the cost of pure silver jewelery is not expensive-- what IS expensive is the design, the prototypes, the going back and forth, the testing, etc.

R&D is expensive. Marketing can be expensive. Shipping from factory to stateside can be expensive.

Actually factory making the widgets not so much.