Full iPhone 4 'Antennagate' Q&A Video Surfaces After 16 Years

I remember this pretty clearly. The issue was that Consumer Reports did a video showing how if you so much as touch the gap between the two antennas, then the cell reception drops to zero immediately every time. It was NOT about "attenuation" which happens when your entire hand covers much of the phone, causing the signal to have trouble going through your hand and dropping by a bar or two.

Memory is a funny thing; that's not what Consumer Reports found:

"Our tests found that when your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side—an easy thing to do—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal." (emphasis added).

That's "attenuation" (as would be going from full bars to zero bars). Attenuation simply means a reduction in signal strength; it does not mean RF energy being absorbed by a person's entire hand. It is "attenuation" if you go from some bars to no bars.

In cases where you had a weak signal (see below for more on this) the signal could appear to drop to 0 and in some cases drop a call, but it wasn't every time in every situation. CR even called it a "reception glitch", which is a mild way of putting it.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2010/07/why-apple-mdash-and-not-its-customers-mdash-should-fix-the-iphone-4/index.htm

Yes, the iPhone 4's antenna was designed poorly for certain circumstances (signal was generally great otherwise compared to other smartphones of the day) and Apple's response wasn't ideal, but the effects were not "if you so much as touch the gap between the two antennas, then the cell reception drops to zero immediately every time."

Also, if you want a deeper dive, Anandtech had a thorough analysis of the antenna and signals: https://web.archive.org/web/20100722093919/http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2

Here's part of the review:

"However, in locales that have less signal, but where iOS still displays 5 bars, the drop of 24 dB is visualized much differently. For example, at another test location, signal without holding the phone is -89 dBm, which is still displayed as 5 bars. Cup the phone, and you'll fall all the way to -113 dBm. All the bars dramatically disappear one after the other, people think they've dramatically lost all the signal, and you know the rest.

If you're at 4 bars already, (which puts you on the low end of possible signal strengths), cupping the phone even more delicately is enough to push you the remaining 10 or so dB to cutoff. It doesn't take much when you're at 4 bars, which is why the visualization is flawed. Complicating matters is that signal is completely fine until down around 2 bars at -107 dBm."

One last comment on this. While Apple was deflecting and this was not the only issue, their claim about the phone incorrectly displaying signal strength was accurate and part of the issue, as Anandtech pointed out: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/07/02Letter-from-Apple-Regarding-iPhone-4

He was very annoyed he had to do this since he was on vacation and had to break it, according to his book.

A youtube channel with a bunch of lost Apple content being called “Sir Mix-A-Lot Rare Music” is hilarious.

Somewhat related comment.

What's interesting about this is that while the antenna design was sub-optimal (bridging the gap with a finger could cause a substantial signal drop) and Apple's response was inelegant, instructions about how to hold a phone without interfering with its antenna were common at the time.

For example, the Nokia 6230: "Use only in the normal position. Don't touch the antenna unnecessarily."

and: "Not touching the antenna area during a phone call optimises the antenna performance and the talktime of your phone."

https://manualzilla.com/doc/7271356/nokia-6230-cell-phone-user-manual

For years cell phone manuals told people not to hold their phones in a way that interfered with the antenna. Again, that's not saying the iPhone 4 antenna was designed well for every use situation, but there is context about how to hold cell phones.

These were the two most senior leaders Steve chose to be with him on stage. Operations on one side, Hardware Engineering on the other. In some alternate universe Bob Mansfield ran Apple for the last 15 years. Worth noting that Tim Cook himself picked Hardware Engineering to lead the company over the next 15.

I miss Steve