A Brand New Day, and a brand new Epiphany... you're gonna love this
Tick.
Great thread btw, I certainly enjoyed reading and learnt something form your original and follow up posts.
One thing that still confusing me...if all antennas attenuate, and actually touching them always leads to increased attenuation and loss of signal strength, why don't I see much attenuation when I touch the 3g antenna, (just the antenna, not the black join) but if I touch the little black join between the antennas on the left, I kill the signal instantly (speedtest shows the signal dies instantly but the bars take up to 25 secs to catch up.)
It seems to me that they actually somehow solved the attenuation problem caused by touching the antenna - which by the sound of it is no mean feat. What they have not solved is the problem that is caused by bridging the 2 antennas (by touching the little black join) and thereby changing their effective length leading to detuning.
Want some real actual speculative proof, if such a thing is possible, that Apple knew something was going to go wrong with the newly designed antennas? Here ya go, and I'm really surprised myself that I didn't come to this realize sooner
because I just did, I swear I just came up with this as I was reading your post, not 1 minute ago:
Ok folks, here we go again, so follow along. I just had another epiphany of sorts.
What's the most natural way to hold the iPhone 4?
Based on sheer numbers, and even with respecting that some people are left handed and
might hold the phone in the right hand (a mirror image of how a person holding it in the left would be), and that some people are simply "different," if you handed 1,000 random people an iPhone 4 and didn't say a word, not one damned word, and it was turned on, probably ~950 of them are going to immediately take the grip or hold the phone
in a manner that is most natural for them - and that means in the left hand.
Just like I hold it (disclaimer: I'm right handed). Just like Steve Jobs holds it (pretty sure he's left handed since he holds it in his left hand and operates it with his right index finger, just like me). Just like 95% of those random people would - in the left hand, held exactly as shown in all the Apple marketing materials (pictures, videos, commercials, etc). The remaining ~50 or so would be left handed by nature, or perhaps they'd feel more comfortable holding it in the right hand regardless of being right handed anyway, or some defect or missing limb is the reason, etc.
The iPhone 4 was designed to be operated most efficiently by holding it in the left hand. This is a fact and it cannot be disputed. The placement of the volume control buttons is further indicative of this fact.
Oh, but wait, that's not the epiphany, no no no...
Here's the epiphany, and here's a picture to get you rolling, so please pay attention as I try my best to be brief this time, seriously. It's very important that you look at this picture and understand it, and I've added arrows and some text to clarify things based on this epiphany I had. Don't laugh, because my 'additions' are actually very relevant if you follow my line of thinking...
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Take a look at that pic, and realize that yes, there's a left side, and a right side. Then step back for a moment and ask yourself the following question (hopefully with some insights into antenna design that I've tried to cover in this thread with my posts - if you don't get that aspect or some of it, this may not make much sense but, I'm going to explain it anyway):
If you understand that the most natural way to hold the iPhone 4 is going to be in the left hand, and you are staring at an antenna design that allows for direct skin-on-metal contact, and - please, please, please this is the most important part - you know/understand that touching an antenna designed to radiate microwave energy will have drastically reduced efficiency because of contact with organic material and how organic material wicks away such energy with a damned high efficiency, it should be clear that you would want to further alter the design of the antenna so that it's as far away from as much skin-on-metal contact as possible.
If you need to read that two, three times to get it, I'll wait... <taps fingers, taps foot... whistles... take your time... looks around... checks out Gizmodo... Engadget... etc...>
Ok, got it? You with me?
If you're trying to design antennas that work but still need to minimize the contact with the hand in any way possible, you'd want to have the least amount of antenna as possible coming into contact with the least amount of skin as possible.
See where I'm going with this?
Look at the picture, and realize that when the phone is held in the left hand, the cellular antenna takes up the entire right side of the device, and 3/4 of the top of the device, and the entire bottom of the device, but maybe only what,
1/8th of the left side, at best? And look at the bottom left portion there were that cellular antenna makes up - here's another pic to make it more clear:
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That's it, that one little nub of the antenna, in the lower left hand side. If you hold the phone normally in the left hand, you're going to come into contact with that portion of the cellular antenna to some degree UNLESS you do choose some funky weird "Apple approved" grip that causes you to hold the phone, perhaps, in a higher position meaning your hand is higher up along the left hand side, potentially leaving that entire cellular portion at the bottom untouched.
Unfortunately for Apple, such a grip isn't "normal," and fortunately for all of us, I'm on the ball today.
So, going back to the idea that Apple - after having designed an antenna that allows direct skin-on-metal contact, you're now faced with two problems, and the solution to each (which is the epiphany) is rather simple:
1) Eradicate the skin-on-metal contact completely.
2)Minimize the contact of the cellular antenna with skin to the highest degree possible given that a person will operate the phone in their left hand with a natural grip.
To eradicate the skin-on-metal contact completely, we have that most elegant and practical of solutions as this thread explains: the Bumper. And that's it, I'm not going to go into that one again, re-read the thread if necessary.
But the new kid on the block here is minimizing the contact with the skin to the highest degree possible - and why is this a necessity? Let me tell you why:
Because not everyone will want to use a case, nor a Bumper, and in doing so they're going to be touching that antenna, folks, and when they do, it's going to wreak some havoc with the basic primary functionality of the iPhone 4, that being it's a cellular phone.
How can Apple do this? Easy, design a two part antenna. But they already did that, right?
Yep, sure seems that way, they've been at this whole antenna design thing for a while, it's a major marketing point of the phone itself, and - when it's actually working properly - can give better performance over previous iPhones and most other cell phones on the market today because of simple mathematics: the iPhone 4 antenna is longer and more closely matches the wavelengths on which it resonates (transmits) as well as the same frequencies when it receives. Basic Antenna 101 stuff again...
But, what about touching those antennas, ever? Well, that's what the Bumper is designed for: to prevent all potential skin-on-metal contact - it's the perfect solution.
But, what if I don't want to use a Bumper, or any case at all? What then, considering I've got to hold the iPhone 4 in my hand to use it?
<fly_on_the_wall_during_some_design_meeting>
"Well... let's see here... if we put this here, move that there, shrink that part, elongate that, take into account some pretty esoteric ergonomic principles, multiply that by the square root of some irrational number less than Pi divided by the most minimal surface area we can on the antennas, let's see..."
</fly_on_the_wall_during_some_design_meeting>
Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you, my Epiphany:
Based on this information, this knowledge, how come Apple didn't just reverse the antenna layout? Why isn't the cellular antenna on the left side of the phone, and the Wi-Fi/GPS/Bluetooth antenna on the right side?
Because placing the cellular antenna on the right side provides the most absolutely minimal surface contact that could potentially be touched by a human hand when the phone is held normally, meaning in the left hand, precisely as Apple's own marketing materials, Steve Jobs, me, you, and most everyone else will hold a cellular phone. When you put the cellular antenna on the right side as shown in the pics above, you create the most absolutely minimal surface area to touch with the human hand from the ergonomic perspective.
Yes, you will still have contact, but what you'll end up with is this:
Minimal contact on the lower left side since there's so little to actually come into contact with (with respect to the cellular antenna itself). Result: negligible effect.
More contact on the entire right side but since you're then dealing with fingertips or the inside surfaces of the fingers, the contact is there but it's still considered a minimal effect with 3-4 contact points typically amounting to maybe 30-40 percent coverage of the right side in terms of sheer surface area.
When you hold the phone in the left hand, the fingers/fingertips only come into contact with less than half of the actual surface area of the right side, so it would (in my opinion) be considered minimal contact. Need a pic to explain my meaning? No problem:
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See what I mean there? In that instance, that hand model is only using 3 points of contact (the pinky is just barely touching the bottom portion of the cellular antenna, not an issue in this example). In other pictures the contact on the surface area of the cellular antenna is about the same, sometimes more, sometimes less.
The most important aspect of all of this is that if the antennas were reversed - if the cellular antenna made up the entire left side of the phone - the sheer amount of surface area presented to the human hand, while holding the phone in a natural way (we've been over this, people know what it means to hold a cell phone in the left hand) becomes one big damned contact point and not several smaller ones.
Apple understood this, just as I do, and decided at some point in the design of the phone that they would have to place the cellular antenna on the right side since, as we all know full and well (or you better) that holding the iPhone 4 in the left hand would mean entirely too much skin-on-metal contact which would cause - not could, it would and it does - severe signal attenuation problems that would result in signal degradation, sometimes to the point of complete loss of service.
The Bumper resolves the skin-on-metal contact issue completely - but not everyone will use a Bumper, nor will everyone use a case, so then it becomes a problem of minimizing the antenna's surface area with respect to how the hand would come into contact with it. That is solved by two antenna design and by placing the cellular antenna in a position where it will come into contact with the least amount of skin possible, which means the right side given the natural grip in the left hand.
Why the two antennas? Funny you should ask. Because if the entire metal band was the antenna system, that's just bad all the way around (pun very much intended).
They could have just as easily (and far more efficiently) made a patch-type foil metal antenna for the Wi-Fi/GPS/Bluetooth and placed it inside the back glass panel, either directly embedded in the glass itself or at least underneath the glass inside the iPhone 4 housing and it would have worked just as well if not better given how 2.4 GHz radio waves propagate.
I'm not going to get into that aspect that this time out, and I really shouldn't use this here but, if I create another thread with my theory on this explanation of the antenna design, I'll get roasted for it - this is my thread, so I'll put the theory here (even in spite of it being primarily about the Bumper).
I know I'm wordy, and redundant, but that's how people learn, sorry. I appreciate comments of all kinds, and yes this is all my theory rolled into one. The antenna design they ended up choosing is causing the problems more than most anything else, that's my belief. The reason for the antenna design they chose and the precise placement of the antennas is what I just hopefully explained, albeit with my customary over-explaining of things.
I hope people learn something from all this, regardless.
Thanks for reading... and have fun, always...
ps
The volume buttons could remain on the left side if the cellular antenna existed in that configuration; holes would be placed in the antenna exactly as they exist now, just as well as the mute button - it would have no effect on the cellular antenna's performance. Those buttons and the switch are irrelevant in that respect. Just wanted to add that...
