A curved back also makes phones easier to handle. If the back of a phone is thicker in the middle, the center of the phone presses against the palm, making it harder to drop and easier to hold.
This handy bit of knowledge has been used in cell phones ever since, up to and including the iPhone 3G S.
The iPhone 4 is 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS, but it’s more awkward to hold. I hate to say it, but it’s true.
The iPhone 4 is not more awkward to hold, at least not for me. A curved back only helps if you happen to hold the phone pressed up against your palm, which anyone who wants to use the phone one-handed will tell you is not ideal. You want to grip your phone with the tops of your fingers, not rest it in your palm, so that your thumb has easy access to the entire screen.
Curved backs mattered a lot more when phones were a lot thicker in general. Now that phones are getting so thin, it is no longer best practice to cradle the phone against your palm. Holding it that way kills all one-handed usability.
Do a lot of people hold their phones in their palms? Sure. But does that mean that this new phone is “awkward to hold” as a general rule? Of course not.
One small problem: If you hold the phone in a way that covers up much of the left antenna (easy to do when holding the phone with your left hand), as well as both lower black strips, you lose most or all of your signal-strength bars, and you could drop your call.
Not a big deal, says Apple. A few years ago, Apple ads encouraged customers to “think different.” Now, its solution to iPhone 4 antenna problems is to “hold different,” or buy a case.
To a usability expert’s mind, the most important thing is for users to whip out their phones, hold them any way they like and make high-quality calls with or without a case.
But to a designer, the elegance of the outside-edge solution is huge, and any minor inconvenience to the user is small.
At Apple, the designers won this argument without compromise.
There is no evidence at all that the designers won “with no compromise.” For all we know, the designers wanted to remove the antennae altogether. Furthermore, the new antennae design improves reception for the vast majority of users, while causing some degradation for the minority of users who a) don’t use a case, b) are left-handed, or hold their phones primarily in their left hand, c) have palms that tend to be moist, thus increasing the interference caused by their skin, and d) happen to grip the phone in a way that covers the gap between the bottom and middle of the right side of the phone. I’m a lefty who doesn’t use the case, and I don’t have this problem. I can make it happen if I try really, really hard, but it would never happen during normal use for me. We’re talking about a teeny, teeny percent of users who will be affected by this, while the rest of us are seeing a vast improvement in reliability and signal quality.
Making choices that favor the majority of the user base over the small minority who might have issues is the very definition of an engineering and usability compromise.
I’m sure usability experts, engineers, marketing people, bean counters and others came up with dozens of reasons why the back of the iPhone 4 should be made of some material other than glass. But the designers wanted glass, Steve Jobs sided with them, and now we have a beautiful new phone that’s heavy and fragile.
The iPhone 4 is neither heavy nor fragile. Ask any 3Gs owner to count the number of scuffs and scratches on their plastic backs vs. the glass front of their phones, and you’ll quickly conclude that glass will provide much more protection than that old plastic back did. Yes, the glass can crack if dropped just the right way, but sudden impact is funny that way. You can drop the phone 50 times and come out unscathed. Then on the 51st, maybe it hits just the right spot against the concrete, and you’re screwed. That was just as true with the older iPhones, or any other portable device, as it is with the iPhone 4.
And while the iPhone 4 is certainly heavier than a 3Gs, it’s not a rock, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s solid, and most reviewers have complimented the fact that it feels more solid, more substantial.
