> A software fix due to be released in the coming weeks will adopt AT&T’s guidelines for signal strength reporting, which will result in a more accurate portrayal of reception on the iPhone 4. Apple knows better than any tech company that these sorts of debacles begin and end with the lazy, uninformed tech media. They report a problem that isn’t really a problem, you suggest a solution that isn’t really a solution.

Note, if you read Apple’s letter carefully, you’ll notice that the solution Apple is proposing won’t actually change anything about the way the iPhone actually handles phone calls. If you have this issue, and you grip your phone the same way you do now, you are still going to have a negative impact on your antennae, just as you do on every other phone. However, because your phone will now report fewer bars in the first place in those areas where you are likely to drop a call, your signal will appear to you to only drop from say, two bars to one, as opposed to five bars to one, thus giving you the impression when the call drops that the signal loss wasn’t so drastic, and you never really had a good signal, anyway.

Which is actually true, and it’s what many more informed people have been trying to point out for over a week now.

Like I said last week, “bars” are a completely arbitrary thing on a cell phone. Apple is simply going to recalibrate the bars to make the signal loss look less drastic, which is fine, because the signal loss is less drastic than it now appears.

The sad part is, this “solution” will actually solve Apple’s problem. People will buy it, just as they’ve bought into the “death grip” hype.

Immediately, the headlines have shifted to positive language. “Apple will address the reception issue with a software fix.” The media, too lazy to figure out what’s actually going on, reports on the fix, and users follow along like sheep. Everything goes back to normal.

Questions like “Why was Apple using a rigged method of showing higher bars than they should have in the first place?” are unlikely to get asked by many. If you believe Apple when it tells you that it was “shocked” to find this “miscalculation”, you’re more of a fanboy than I am.

Was Apple trying to cover up the fact that AT&T’s network isn’t so great, or were they covering up the fact that all iPhones weren’t really getting very good reception? My guess is the latter. Apple is fairly new to the whole designing phones thing, after all. Stands to reason that the first few models weren’t exactly ideal, perfect performers in this arena.

Personally, I’m happy to see this change, anyway, even though the “death grip” hasn’t effected me at all. I’m tired of my phone lying to me, telling me I have five bars of signal when I can’t even get a web page to download or make a simple call. The “bars” are never going to be accurate, but it will be nice to see them be slightly more accurate than they are now.

> The difference is that reception is massively better on the iPhone 4 in actual use. This has been my experience, but it’s nice to see it quantified with real research. The iPhone 4 is overall a much better phone, as far as reception of cell signal goes. The issues with gripping the phone in the left hand and bridging the antennae are unfortunate, and Apple should do its best to address that. But the antennae design is a net win for the vast majority of users.

The way I look at it, Apple could have put the antennae inside the phone, like they did on the 3Gs, in which case EVERYONE would have gotten worse reception and more dropped calls, or they could put it on the outside like they did, and help most of us while hurting a slim minority of users. They made a tough albeit correct design decision, and yet they are being punished for it in the press.

via [macworld.com](http://www.macworld.com/article/152347/2010/06/iphone4_design.html?lsrc=rss_main)

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.