A few industry reactions have already surfaced regarding Apple’s announcements regarding the issue Steve Jobs called the “Antennagate.” By the way, when Jobs mentioned that word, he did say that “there is no Antennagate.”
First off, Nokia agrees that a tight grip could affect the signal strength on most mobile phones, but they still think that you should still be able to hold the phone naturally, saying “we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.” That’s sort of a slight zing in response to the report that Apple was aware of the antenna problem, but Jobs just liked the existing design. (Although this video says that Nokia also might need to issue a bumper soon. For the E71 at least.)
Here’s the official statement from Nokia:
As we’ve all seen, Apple had mentioned Nokia in their press conference today regarding the iPhone4. I wanted to take a moment and send you a statement regarding Nokia’s own antenna design and function.
Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.
Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.
In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.
As for Consumer Reports, who earlier went on record that they won’t recommend the iPhone 4? Apparently, they still won’t recommend it, even after the free bumper and refund program.
According to this CR blog post, they like the bumper program as a “good first step,” but the September 30th deadline and their refusal to extend the refund to people who bought third party cases is still no long-term solution.
It’s not like it’ll stop everyone from buying it anyway. Can’t argue with the numbers: three million-and-counting within the first month is crazy. As for us, we’ll be holding onto our 3GS just a little bit longer. It’s never wise to buy a first-gen product on release day anyway.
Tags: Antennagate, Apple, Consumer Reports, iPhone 4, Mobile Phones, Nokia
