…And that’s how the Apple press conference kicked off: they played the “iPhone Antenna Song” from YouTube. The one that started with “there’s a whole lot of hoopla about the iPhone antenna,” and ended with a catchy chorus that repeated “If you don’t want an iPhone 4, don’t buy it. If you bought one and you don’t like it, bring it back,” (it’s actually still looping in our head. The YouTube video’s available after the break.) That pretty much sums up the whole message, punctuated by Jobs going onstage after saying “bring it back to the iPhone store, but you know you won’t.”
And he’s most likely right.
The presentation started with the numbers; specifically, 3 million (over 3M sold since the launch) and #1 (in customer satisfaction of any smartphone). Then Jobs went on to talk about “Antennagate” and rolled out test procedures that showed that even the BlackBerry Bold 9700, Droid Eris, and Samsung Omnia II suffered from signal loss when held a certain way. Oh, and they showed a few photos of their $100M anechoic chambers:
This is where they test their prototype phones and simulate cellular base stations, along with Wi-fi, Bluetooth, and GPS connectivity. Probably a good place to grill engineers who lose their prototypes too. (whatever happened to that guy?)
Now comes the good news: the rumors were true. To keep everyone happy, they’ll be handing out free bumper cases to every iPhone 4 buyer. As for the people who already got one, “we’ll give you a refund,” Jobs said. The free case and refund program will stretch up til Semptember 30th. But if you bought a third party case (cases that weren’t released by Apple), no refund for you.
And if you’re still not happy? “You can bring the phone back. We’ll give you a full refund within 30 days. No restocking fee. We want to make everyone happy, and if we can’t make you happy we’ll give you a full refund.” And that should be the end of this whole Antennagate issue. Probably.
As for the rest of the iPhone 4 presentation, Jobs announced that they’re working on some problems with the proximity sensor, that the white iPhone 4 will start shipping at the end of the month, and that the iPhone 4 will start shipping to 17 more countries, “with the omission of South Korea” by July 30th. Namely, to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Satisfied? No? Well then bring it back. Remember, there are poor fanboys out there who don’t have iPhone 4s, so count your blessings. Anyway, here’s the iPhone Antenna Song:
Source: Engadget
Tags: Antennagate, Apple, iPhone 4, Mobile Phones
