The new iPhone – for which some rather silly people once more queued to buy and over which Steven Fry engages in verbal incontinence has a glitch.
The issue relates to the mobile phone signal, with users reporting a drop in signal strength when the phone is held.
The casing of Apple’s latest phone is made of stainless steel, which also serves as its antenna.
Richard Warner, who bought his iPhone 4 on Wednesday morning, contacted BBC News, saying that he thought the phone was “useless in its current state”.
“Apple have created a phone that has an antenna on the bottom left-hand side of the phone.”
“This means that when you hold it in your left hand, the signal bars slowly fade until there is no signal,” he wrote.
Oh dear… Mustn’t chuckle. Oh, okay, just a little.
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, he described the integrated antenna as “really cool engineering”.
Yeah, Steve, really cool. Shame it doesn’t work, eh?
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For the record, I don’t hate Apple or its products, I merely have no time for the undeserved hyperbole and idol worship of everything that Jobs comes up with.
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Update: Steve Jobs has a solution:
Apple has responded to reports of reception issues on the new iPhone 4 by advising users to hold the device a different way.
The company’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, replied to an email sent by one user who was experiencing problems. The user, Aram, asked Jobs if there were “any plans” to fix the problem. Jobs responded by advising Aram to “avoid holding [the phone] in that way”.
Or you could fork out £25 for a rubber band that goes round the device.
The bumpers, which cost around £25 and are available in a range of colours, will not be shipped until at least July 16, according to the Apple website.
Colour me unimpressed.
I have a really cool phone. You can make and receive calls on it.
And dont get me started on that stupid ipad advert. It makes me want to pull mt arm off, just so I have something to throw at the telly….
I’m reminded of a colleague about ten years ago when mobiles really started doing other things than make calls. He wanted a phone to keep in contact with his wife while she was in hospital and he was out and about. The salesman told him about what the phone would do – text, WAP (remember that?) and so on. My colleague asked “Does it make telephone calls?”
I tend to go along with him on that one. I have a smartphone, but the only app that I use is the facility to synchronise my diary and contacts. I am certainly not going to surf the web with such a tiny screen and I don’t want loads of apps that I never knew that I didn’t need.
The iPhone is a gadget – a toy, for the most part – and as such, it’s fine. I wouldn’t consider that or the iPad as serious business tools.
You’re right, it is a toy for the most part.
The ipad is advertised as “beautiful” and “more books than you can read ect…”
I have a huge collection of actual books, on bookshelves. I dont know about you but I find that much more pleasing to the eye than a plastic gadget.
Mrs L made exactly that point when the iPad was launched with all the accompanying hyperbole. I agree – I like a proper book with pages that you can put on the bookshelf. And, no, that doesn’t make me a Luddite or technophobe.
Bucko, well said, my attitude exactly, quite a novel concept in this day and age, I’m told.
I think we should start a rumour that the reason for the degradation is that it focuses the signal on the brain? Cue the loud clanging of cognitive dissonance, mixed feelings and all the rest.
Meh. Manufactured product isn’t perfect shock.
So it goes.
At least the internet allows potential purchasers to find out these things double quick and hinders the manu’s hoodwinking us by pretending that it is some isolated incident/individual problem…..
Yawn.
Most mobile phones have the antenna on the bottom left—because that is the area that is furthest away from the head.
Here’s an engineer on how this is (surprise, surprise) largely the fault of government bureaucrats: http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/6/24/apple-iphone-4-antennas.html
This problem seems to be related to areas of spotty 3G reception: most people are reporting far better reception than with previous versions of the iPhone.
I would love to know where the BBC’s Richard Warner lives, because I bet it’s somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
DK
Thing is, I’ve never had the problem on any of the mobiles I’ve owned – and I’m left handed when using a handset. Apparently Warner was experiencing the problem at the BBC building, if he was the same chap I saw talking about it on the news – that’s in London, I believe, so, yes, fairly rural 😉
Apple say they sold 1.7 million in the first three days!
That is a lot of phones if they all need fixing!