Nokia prioritize antenna performance over design

It's fair enough Steve's response in offering refunds, but in the main it was a complete dismissal with the attitude being that if you're really fussy you can have a refund if you want, but we don't see what the problem is, and have a rubber band if you really want, but it's not our problem because other phones do the same.

Well Steve, no they don't. It's generally quite hard to lose your signal for making calls whilst holding phones by any of the proper manufacturers of phones and not those who make kiddy toys that happen to be able to make phone calls.

Having a dig at other manufacturers for your own stupid mistakes is not on. Just fix the phone and get on with it (I'd tweak the design so the bottom area of the antenna is no longer part of the antenna and is just metal bling, or even chrome plastic. Maybe even just stick plastic film over the metal).

Unregistered wrote:Most. Pathetic. Comment. Ever.

deadkenny wrote:It's fair enough Steve's response in offering refunds, but in the main it was a complete dismissal with the attitude being that if you're really fussy you can have a refund if you want, but we don't see what the problem is, and have a rubber band if you really want, but it's not our problem because other phones do the same.

Well Steve, no they don't. It's generally quite hard to lose your signal for making calls whilst holding phones by any of the proper manufacturers of phones and not those who make kiddy toys that happen to be able to make phone calls.

Having a dig at other manufacturers for your own stupid mistakes is not on. Just fix the phone and get on with it (I'd tweak the design so the bottom area of the antenna is no longer part of the antenna and is just metal bling, or even chrome plastic. Maybe even just stick plastic film over the metal).

Why? It's the truth. That Nokia never loses the signal, and requires a significant death grip to drop the bars. The problem with the iPhone 4 (and why many don't see any issue) is where you have poor reception at the start. The software fix is to address the fact it's not accurately showing the bars in the first place in this situation. The reception issue itself is simply that hugging the phone will cause the signal to drop entirely if you have poor reception. Nokia and the like have had more than a decade of experience in this area and know exactly how to prevent signal drop due to the way the user holds the phone. Basic RF engineering. They may make a rubbish UI, but when it comes to making calls they know how to do it right.

Well, not true. An increasing number of tests point out that Nokias (and other makers) are not immune to this problem on the shitty US networks. The shitstorm is about to begin...

My guess is that Apple didn't include any Nokia phones because Nokia isn't that popular in the US, and this press conference was primarily for a US audience. RIM has a very good reputation for signal quality in the US, so including the BB Bold 9700 was intended to show that even "good" phones have a potential "death grip" issue. I think it is worse on the iPhone 4 because of the exposed antenna, but the thing to remember is that this got serious traction after the Consumer Reports article came out. CR didn't test any Nokia phones in their recent review except for the Surge and Nuron, which they panned and which aren't direct competitors to the iPhone.

Steve, you said that probably less than 5,000 N97 owners would take advantage of the rebate, but then you also said that it would be great PR. Seems contradictory to me.

paulomario77 wrote:Steve, you said that probably less than 5,000 N97 owners would take advantage of the rebate, but then you also said that it would be great PR. Seems contradictory to me.

Nope. The 5000 who would take up the offer would include all the high profile geeks, complainers, bloggers and so on - between them they'd generate a lot of PR. Anyway, unlikely to happen - but a man can hope. Nokia need to work *some* miracles to try and win hearts and minds again....

umm. doesn't anyone remember the e71 reception issues?

> Well its obvious that the reception where this guy is, is just tottaly crap.
> no 3g reception, just gsm (and I doubt there is edge or even gprs).
> Well after all the above "hugging" the phone will make the bad reception worse
> but still not loosing it fully. On iPhone 4 things get really really worse!!!

Here's one for you with 3g signals in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C402CcAsNK8

Unregistered wrote:umm. doesn't anyone remember the e71 reception issues?

Yes. However, why bring that up, since it doesn't fit with the fantasy here that Nokia phones "don't have signal issues." All manufacturers put out duds every once in a while, particularly someone like Nokia who puts out dozens of similar devices at a time. iPhone 4 has some signal issues and has caught some legitimate flak, but there appears to be a fairly simple fix to it.

Nokia's issues with many of its previous phones require more than a $29 bumper to fix.

Unregistered wrote:"Nokia prioritize antenna performance over design"

I AM NO SURE OF THIS.......

CHECK IT OUT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1BEWCeVvuA (SEE THE SIGNAL BAR)

AND IT'S NOT A SINGLE CASE.....

lol, if I squeeze the iPhone4 like that it will probably lose all signal or the glass will break (this part I'm joking). No one holds there phone like that!!! I'm no Nokia lover either, I bash them all the time but Mr Jobs is beyond belief. Why do you think there is a gap between? Because the two antenna's interfere with each other and when you hold the phone the two antenna's you are bridging the two together. A big design flaw...

[QUOTE=KPO'M;471296]Yes. However, why bring that up, since it doesn't fit with the fantasy here that Nokia phones "don't have signal issues." All manufacturers put out duds every once in a while, particularly someone like Nokia who puts out dozens of similar devices at a time. iPhone 4 has some signal issues and has caught some legitimate flak, but there appears to be a fairly simple fix to it.

Nokia's issues with many of its previous phones require more than a $29 bumper to fix.[/QUOTE]

LOL, it's a $0.50c bumper being sold to idiots for $29.

Absolutely any RF device will suffer with signal performance due to shielding. Not just enclosing it in a fist, but moving within buildings. That's not the problem with the iPhone 4. Apple have admitted their software lies about signal strength by displaying more bars than it should (as iPhones have always been bad at reception compared to other phones, they might need it to lie). Apple also have an exposed metal antenna that by touching sinks away some of the RF, and an antenna separation between different RF functions that when bridged also causes a problem. In an attempt to try and improve on their previous poor antennae, Apple have managed to make it worse. It's simply a very bad schoolboy error with design and engineering, by using an exposed antenna that Apple are seeking to fix by covering it with a cheap piece of latex.

And no attempt by Jobs to calumniate other phone makers will wash where the other phone makers have unexposed antennae. How many RF devices have you EVER seen where the antennae are meant to be held? It's just plain stupid.

Put simply, this iPhone 4 problem is not the same as other phones, it's not just a normal shielding effect and all these idiots posting up youtube videos are wasting everybodys time because we know that shielding affects RF already.

Jobs, unlike your average customern we are not fooled.

I don't actually accept this "we have decades of experience" claim. They might have decades of IP, but experience belongs to the employees not the brand. It would take a phone company six months to recruit a team of RF experts from rivals, and in six months those decades of experience have moved from one company to another.

So, Apple must have good RF engineers.

Far more likely to be the problem is the power of the people responsible for aesthetic design having more shout than the engineers doing the tech work. A victory for form over function has resulted in this problem.

I think it's probable that there are tech engineers in Apple saying "told you so, you didn't listen".

Sort of like space shuttle SRBs, but a billion times more trivial.

[QUOTE=KPO'M;471296]Yes. However, why bring that up, since it doesn't fit with the fantasy here that Nokia phones "don't have signal issues." All manufacturers put out duds every once in a while, particularly someone like Nokia who puts out dozens of similar devices at a time. iPhone 4 has some signal issues and has caught some legitimate flak, but there appears to be a fairly simple fix to it.

Nokia's issues with many of its previous phones require more than a $29 bumper to fix.[/QUOTE]
Whilst the odd Nokia (or any other) has had reception issues (not that I've ever experienced any over the long years of Nokia ownership), the real issue is just the way Steve, rather than just say "we screwed up", is being rather dismissal and in my opinion insulting the iPhone owners but implying it's no big issue and bunging them a rubber band, and more importantly then takes the opportunity to have a swipe at the opposition (including fabricating lies, such as the sticker thing on Nokias).

Anyway, I'm surprised a bigger fuss wasn't made of the iPhone 3G. The number of tweets I see from friends who moan they can't get a 3G signal again, despite in the same locations with a Nokia it being no problem at all.

Unregistered wrote:I don't actually accept this "we have decades of experience" claim. They might have decades of IP, but experience belongs to the employees not the brand. It would take a phone company six months to recruit a team of RF experts from rivals, and in six months those decades of experience have moved from one company to another.

So, Apple must have good RF engineers.

Take a successful F1 driver and put him in a rubbish team, and he fails to win races.

Far more likely to be the problem is the power of the people responsible for aesthetic design having more shout than the engineers doing the tech work. A victory for form over function has resulted in this problem.

Nokia seemed to have worked this out with the E72 as the bottom area where you grip it is actually chrome plastic, instead of the chrome metal of the rest of the trim.

Another idiot here, in this case my X6 doing an Iphone4 impersonation. Guess I better make sure I camp out as close as I can to the nearest mast from now on if this is the way things are going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfHyj43t1A

Davescot wrote:Another idiot here, in this case my X6 doing an Iphone4 impersonation. Guess I better make sure I camp out as close as I can to the nearest mast from now on if this is the way things are going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfHyj43t1A

Noooooooooooooo, it can't be true because... because they prioritize antenna performance over design and and they have decades of experience in UI design.. ugh I mean antenna design!!

Unregistered wrote:LOL, it's a $0.50c bumper being sold to idiots for $29.

Absolutely any RF device will suffer with signal performance due to shielding. Not just enclosing it in a fist, but moving within buildings. That's not the problem with the iPhone 4. Apple have admitted their software lies about signal strength by displaying more bars than it should (as iPhones have always been bad at reception compared to other phones, they might need it to lie). Apple also have an exposed metal antenna that by touching sinks away some of the RF, and an antenna separation between different RF functions that when bridged also causes a problem. In an attempt to try and improve on their previous poor antennae, Apple have managed to make it worse. It's simply a very bad schoolboy error with design and engineering, by using an exposed antenna that Apple are seeking to fix by covering it with a cheap piece of latex.

Actually, in general the iPhone 4 does get much better reception than the previous models. Putting the antenna on the outside was part of that. Remember, the iPhone 4 is Apple's first quad-band UMTS phone, too, so the antenna design itself needs to be a bit different for that reason alone. The bridging issue is real, and the temporary solution is kludgy, but it is one issue in the overall design of the antenna. In other respects, people are reporting getting signal and not dropping calls where the previous models would.

IOW, Apple is improving with RF as each generation comes along, as we'd expect. There's history, too. RIM didn't start out as having a great reputation for RF. However, now they are among the best. Plus Nokia's experience with the e72's poor reception shows even experienced companies sometimes make design errors. Add that most of iPhone's sales occur in the US, where AT&T's network isn't as strong as networks in Europe and Asia, and naturally dropped call rates will tend to be higher.

The AT&T effect is very real. On my N95, N85, and N97, I could identify two specific spots along my commute where I would always drop calls. On elevators, too, I would usually get a signal until right before it reached my floor (causing dropped calls all the time).

Davescot wrote:Another idiot here, in this case my X6 doing an Iphone4 impersonation. Guess I better make sure I camp out as close as I can to the nearest mast from now on if this is the way things are going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfHyj43t1A

The X6 antenna is not exposed and possible to touch. Therefore your problem is shielding and no device is immune to shielding RF.

The iPhone problem is different, it is just touching, no need to shield.

You were doing really well there, for the first four words.

[QUOTE=KPO'M;471316]Actually, in general the iPhone 4 does get much better reception than the previous models. [/QUOTE]

It wouldn't take much to improve over the previous models, so bad were they. You could probably improve 3 fold and still not be up to the standards of other makers.

deadkenny wrote:

In a big corporate it takes a lot more than just poaching expert engineers. It requires the right management at all levels, infrastructure, development facilities, procedures, time and money, vision, and even just having the right atmosphere and working conditions.

Take a successful F1 driver and put him in a rubbish team, and he fails to win races.

.

A good driver in a rubbish team will add good feedback, improve the car and reduce its lap-times.

But this isn't F1, and simple poaching of staff has brought great results many times and there are many examples in history.

The Register put it nicely, as usual in its own defiant style:

"And so inside Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field�, there's no problem with the iPhone 4 that any other smartphone doesn't have � but if you think there is, Apple will give you either a free case or a full refund. In addition, when asked if AT&T would also refund its service fees and allow unhappy users to break their contracts, Jobs said "I believe so."

Why are Apple offering all that if there is no problem that isn't normal for smartphones. Exposed antenna = mistake.

Unregistered wrote:> Well its obvious that the reception where this guy is, is just tottaly crap.
> no 3g reception, just gsm (and I doubt there is edge or even gprs).
> Well after all the above "hugging" the phone will make the bad reception worse
> but still not loosing it fully. On iPhone 4 things get really really worse!!!

Here's one for you with 3g signals in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C402CcAsNK8

Yes and that guy is just like he is trying to break the phone...not just hugging it...you know thats the typical way of making a phonecall right? GIVE ME A BREAK...I own a N97 classic and a 5310 XM. I tried it on both phones like crazy and what I got was just some small drops on bars 1-3 bars but never tottaly loosing fully the reception. And thats on a place I dont have the best reception always!

What about just touching one spot on the phone...just touching the antenna and not huggin the whole phone...just like the way you touch the antenna on iPhone 4 and looses all the reception, you know the typical way when you touch a phone when making a phone call. By the way there is something strange on the N95... he left the phone and took so long to recover...something is really fishy there...

Either way I feel that fanboys are just always trying to underate the problems of their precious belongings...or else the end of the world will come!

MemphisX wrote:Yes and that guy is just like he is trying to break the phone...not just hugging it...you know thats the typical way of making a phonecall right? GIVE ME A BREAK...I own a N97 classic and a 5310 XM. I tried it on both phones like crazy and what I got was just some small drops on bars 1-3 bars but never tottaly loosing fully the reception. And thats on a place I dont have the best reception always!

What about just touching one spot on the phone...just touching the antenna and not huggin the whole phone...just like the way you touch the antenna on iPhone 4 and looses all the reception, you know the typical way when you touch a phone when making a phone call. By the way there is something strange on the N95... he left the phone and took so long to recover...something is really fishy there...

Either way I feel that fanboys are just always trying to underate the problems of their precious belongings...or else the end of the world will come!

I'm unable to reproduce the death grip problem on iPhone 4 on the modern European networks (sometimes 1 bar drop) so don't be too proud that your Nokias drop 3 bars in Greece.

Unregistered wrote:I'm unable to reproduce the death grip problem on iPhone 4 on the modern European networks (sometimes 1 bar drop) so don't be too proud that your Nokias drop 3 bars in Greece.

I can take the iPhone right down to no signal using just a fingertip on the modern European networks.

Unregistered wrote:I can take the iPhone right down to no signal using just a fingertip on the modern European networks.

Dunno how...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKDetBU9PAk (the video is Hungarian, recorded in the UK, O2-UK network)

Unregistered wrote:Dunno how...

Really?

Check out the official Apple press releases then.

Unregistered wrote:Really?

Check out the official Apple press releases then.

It says that a very small percentage of users experience the problem, only if the reception is poor. Here in my country the reception is mostly great almost everywhere (European networks are significantly better than the US ones) and I can't reproduce the problem.

On the poor US networks you can make even a Nokia easily drop the bars (search youtube).
Or HTC... see page 13 in the linked manual:
http://member.america.htc.com/download/Web_materials/Manual/DROID_ERIS_Verizon/DROID_ERIS_Verizon_English_UM_11_5.pdf

It's quite typical Apple marketing - blame everyone else but themselves for what is essentially a design issue. Years ago, they had lousy hardware and could not sell desktops and they blame Intel, Microsoft and etc for their plight.

Now it's Nokia turn. I was wondering if Jobs know something about Nokia that we don't and he IS worried. It's enlightening that he did not take aim at SEricsson, Motorola, RIM or even Android. Nokia's phone have always been strong phones but the UI and Ovi (store and all, except maybe Maps) suck bigtime. Jobs know that iPhone is not so great when it comes to the phone bit.

If only Nokia and iPhone join hands..... (but iTunes have to buck up on the syncing non-game and non-media stuff).

RIM's response also...

http://www.bitterwallet.com/blackberry-our-phones-work-so-screw-you-apple/32227

Good example here. No death grip required, just touch the metal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhIieJPKcQs

Now show me a Nokia that does this (beyond the old 90s Nokia's with external antennas).

deadkenny wrote:Good example here. No death grip required, just touch the metal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhIieJPKcQs

Now show me a Nokia that does this (beyond the old 90s Nokia's with external antennas).

Hmm, read the second comment for the video:

"Hi there,
I did not buy this phone due to these problems! But I have the same isue with Samsung Galaxy S!
Type "Samsung I9000 Galaxy S - signal reception issues - luinHD " into youtube search!
I just tested it and it true ;("
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LROTHrTR92k

OK, it's not Nokia, but it's just a matter of time...

Unregistered wrote:It says that a very small percentage of users experience the problem, only if the reception is poor. Here in my country the reception is mostly great almost everywhere (European networks are significantly better than the US ones) and I can't reproduce the problem.

On the poor US networks you can make even a Nokia easily drop the bars (search youtube).
Or HTC... see page 13 in the linked manual:
http://member.america.htc.com/download/Web_materials/Manual/DROID_ERIS_Verizon/DROID_ERIS_Verizon_English_UM_11_5.pdf

With one finger touching a small piece of metal, or completely shrouding the device in the fist.

People are still in denial.