Linked List: July 16, 2010

Friday, 16 July 2010

‘Death Grip’ Would Be a Cool Name for Band, by the Way ★

InformationWeek’s Eric Zeman on whether other phones really are easily susceptible to “death grips”:

Samsung held a huge launch event for its Galaxy S line of Android handsets in New York City a few weeks ago. During the event, Samsung’s media relations staff was sure to take some pot shots at the iPhone 4, and told me, “You can hold the Galaxy S any way you want.”

Um, not true.

iPhone 4 Proximity Sensor Fix Coming in Next Software Update, Presumably iOS 4.1 ★

The weirdest thing about this entire Antennagate situation is that both from my own personal experience and based on a lot of emails from iPhone 4-owning DF readers, this proximity sensor bug is causing far more actual problems than the external antenna.

TechCrunch Panel Discussion on Antennagate, Featuring Yours Truly ★

Arrington had his jackass dial turned to 11, but his schtick has gotten so thick that I think it’s become sort of cute. And it actually makes for good, if not particularly elucidating, argument.

I’ve been working here at TechCrunch’s SOMA office all afternoon and evening, and I must say, they truly get the shittiest AT&T reception I’ve ever seen, even by San Francisco standards. Place is like a Faraday cage.

Apple’s Antenna Design and Test Labs ★

Video from Apple showing off their remarkable wireless testing facilities. This is the lab a few of us got to tour in person after the event.

Why show this? They’re punching back, as best they can, at the accusations that the iPhone 4’s antenna was poorly or inadequately tested. The iPhone 4 antenna — “weak spot” and all — is behaving exactly as intended. It’s all right there in the first sentence on the page:

Apple never releases a product without thoroughly testing it first.

I wonder how quickly they were able to put together this video and the other assorted “antennagate” materials? Given the remarkably short notice for the press conference, I would think pretty quickly.

EleMints ★

My thanks to EleMints for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. EleMints is a great periodic table app for iOS — examine all the elements and their properties through a great UI. EleMints also offers some very cool graphing features.

EleMints 2, with support for the iPhone 4 retina display and native iPad support, is coming soon. Purchase EleMints now and you’ll get a free upgrade to EleMints 2 when it ships.

Graffiti for Android ★

A cool trick, but I used a Handspring Visor for like 18 months back in the day and never got the hang of Graffiti.

Dave Nanian’s Takeaway ★

Dave Nanian’s tweeted summary of today’s event:

So, in sum: there is no problem, all phones have this no problem, a case fixes this no problem, free case to fix your no problem. Got it!

Twitter forces brevity, but I don’t think the “Jobs says there’s no problem with the iPhone 4 antenna” angle is fair. Jobs clearly stated that the iPhone 4’s antenna has a “weak spot”: the black antenna gap in the lower left corner. The message was that compared to previous models, the iPhone 4 antenna is better overall, but has a worse weakness. Jobs just didn’t — or couldn’t bring himself to — state it that directly, with the conjunctive “but”.

Update: Here’s a bit from Jobs taken from Josh Topolsky’s Engadget live blog coverage:

But not everyone is seeing this — a small number encounter it. For those customers we’ll get them a case, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll get them a full refund. And we’ll continue to work on antennas that don’t have this problem.

That doesn’t sound like someone arguing “there is no problem”.

Jeff Bertolucci, Marketing Genius ★

Jeff Bertolucci:

Apple needs to act now. Rather than follow its annual upgrade cycle for the iPhone — a relatively leisurely pace in the mobile phone world — it must deliver a new model ASAP.

Again, the iPhone 4 has lost its cachet. It’s no longer the coolest gadget in town. People won’t swoon over your new iPhone, they’ll ask if you’re having signal problems.

So I guess that three-week wait for iPhones ordered today isn’t due to demand, and the white iPhone 4 isn’t going to sell?

This MacRumors Forum Poster Was Remarkably Prescient With His Prediction for How Today’s Event Would Go ★

If anything, he made some of the same points more succinctly than did Jobs. (If you’re getting déjà vu, perhaps it’s because I linked to this on Twitter Wednesday night.)

The Bloomberg Story Steve Jobs Called ‘A Total Crock’ ★

Peter Burrows and Connie Guglielmo, reporting yesterday for Bloomberg:

Last year, Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management the device’s design may hurt reception, said the person, who is not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf and asked not to be identified. A carrier partner also raised concerns about the antenna before the device’s June 24 release, according to another person familiar with the situation. […]

Apple’s industrial design team, led by Jonathan Ive, submitted several iPhone designs before Jobs and other executives settled on the bezel antenna, said the person familiar with the company’s design. Caballero, the antenna expert, voiced concern in early planning meetings that it might lead to dropped calls and presented a serious engineering challenge, the person said.

Jobs called this story “a total crock” during the Q&A, and later said he’d “asked Ruben about it, and he says it’s total bullshit too”.

But if you watch the event video or read a transcript, I think what Jobs is disputing is the angle, or at least the implied angle: that Caballero, the antenna expert, recommended against the design, and Jobs disregarded Caballero’s advice for aesthetic reasons. Clearly there are trade-offs with this new antenna. Apple is arguing that it’s better overall than previous iPhone antenna, but it has a worse “weak spot” (to use Apple’s parlance). There can be no doubt that Caballero would have made this trade-off explicitly clear to Jobs. That he “voiced concern” and said it “presented a serious engineering challenge” doesn’t mean Caballero recommended against the design.

(And, for what it’s worth, Caballero personally led the behind-the-scenes tour of Apple’s mega-millions wireless testing lab that Apple offered about a dozen members of the press after the event.)

The New York Times Story Scott Forstall Called ‘Patently False’ ★

Miguel Helft, reporting yesterday for The New York Times:

One person with direct knowledge of the phone’s design said Thursday that the iPhone 4 exposed a longstanding weakness in the basic communications software inside Apple’s phones and that the reception problems were not caused by an isolated hardware flaw.

Instead, the problems emerged in the complex interaction between specialized communications software and the antenna, said the person, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

The person said the problems were longstanding but had been exposed by the design of the iPhone 4. All cellphones can be affected by the way a hand grips the phone, but well-designed communications software compensates for a variety of external factors and prevents calls from dropping, the person said.

Engadget’s Josh Topolsky asked about this NYT story during the Q&A, and Scott Forstall said the above quoted portion regarding a latent baseband bug having been triggered by the iPhone 4 design was “patently false”. But Forstall also made clear that Apple continually works on the tuning of their baseband software, so future software updates could improve iPhone 4 reception. What’s not true, according to Forstall, is that the iPhone 4’s antenna design uncovered latent longstanding problems in the baseband.

Apple’s ‘Smartphone Antenna Performance’ Page ★

Part of Apple’s defense is their argument that most other smartphones can lose signal strength when held in certain ways, and they’ve shot videos of a bunch of smartphones losing bars when being “held wrong”. They showed three of these videos during the press conference today: the BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris, and Samsung Omnia II.

What’s interesting to me is that on the web page, they’ve also included a video of the iPhone 3GS losing two bars (on the new iOS 4.0.1 bar scale) when held wrong — the same loss of bars as the iPhone 4. They didn’t include the 3GS video in the presentation, but should have.

Apple Posts Video From Today’s Press Conference ★

Alas, it omits the Q&A segment, as usual. Worth watching, though. Jobs’s tone was very telling. And whatever you do, don’t get talked into a drinking game involving Jobs saying “hard data”.

Surprise, Surprise ★

Gawker steals content. Film at 11.

Senator Chuck Schumer’s Open Letter to Steve Jobs Regarding the iPhone 4 Antenna ★

Grandstanding — but it goes to show how this saga was (is?) spiraling out of control.