iPhone 4G reception problem is mostly your fault

Apple’s iPhone 4g rolled out with record sales yet it’s mostly known for it’s poor recep­tion. I’ve heard more about it than the fea­tures of the phone. Boast­ing 4g lack of recep­tion is more than a minor detail.

Apple’s response to con­sumer complaints?

Blame it on the customers:

…some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which cov­ers the black strip in the lower left cor­ner of the metal band. This is a far big­ger drop than nor­mal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of hav­ing a faulty antenna design.

Why are so many iPhone own­ers so strong and aggressive?

Cus­tomers don’t under­stand the dif­fer­ence between qual­ity of recep­tion and the dis­play­ing of sig­nal bars:

…we were stunned to find that the for­mula we use to cal­cu­late how many bars of sig­nal strength to dis­play is totally wrong. For exam­ple, we some­times dis­play 4 bars when we should be dis­play­ing as few as 2 bars. Users observ­ing a drop of sev­eral bars when they grip their iPhone in a cer­tain way are most likely in an area with very weak sig­nal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erro­neously dis­play­ing 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

Apple’s con­nclu­sion

(Remem­ber Apple’s big brother ad from the 1980’s? Imag­ine the per­son on the t.v. screen read­ing this)

We have gone back to our labs and retested every­thing, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wire­less per­for­mance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast major­ity of users who have not been trou­bled by this issue, this soft­ware update will only make your bars more accu­rate. For those who have had con­cerns, we apol­o­gize for any anx­i­ety we may have caused.

One small dis­play prob­lem and a warn­ing to be less aggres­sive when hold­ing your iPhone?

Remem­ber when com­pa­nies built prod­ucts that worked and had depend­able sup­port? Com­pe­ti­tion in the smart phone indus­try is really heat­ing up. Apple can no longer rest on it’s lau­rels. If they can’t get core ele­ments of their bread and but­ter iPhone right and take more respon­si­bil­ity for their prod­uct they may want to peak over their shoulder.

Apple press release

photo cour­tesy of flikr user Jason Bren­nan