iPhone 4 - it's not that bad

Apple releases new products, weathers storms of praise and abuse ... it's almost a familiar cycle now. First all the pictures come out of people queuing for a new Apple device, then there's praise as people discover what it's capable of, and then a backlash that gets picked up by the seeming legions of Apple haters who gleefully, if not fervently, spread negative stories far and wide.

The stories gather like a great big snowball, sweeping all before - but also like that proverbial snowfall, they eventually melt away, leaving a damp trace.

First iOS4 shipped, and lots of people, myself included, immediately downloaded it onto our iPhone 3GS and iPod touch. The earlier generations of these devices aren't really up to it but hey, we live in the information age. You change your devices at least every three years, right?

It used to be five-seven years for computers, now I find three years is straining my Mac's resources. But I do hit it with hard-out use and testing. That said, I honestly, really don't want to go to an under-three-year turnaround - are you listening, oh Consumer Gods, hallowed be thy tech game?

Anyway, then iPhone 4 came out, a whole new model of iPhone. It has a better camera, squarer, slimmer design, it's faster with more RAM - and a staggering (by anyone's terms) 1.7 million were sold in, essentially, one weekend in the US (where it went on sale first).

And this must be borne in mind along with the fact that Apple sells far more iPhones outside the US than in - Apple has six times as many iPhone owners internationally than in the US. When its only real product was the Mac, US sales were the bulk of the business. So once those iPhone 4s go on sale outside the US - big and bigger sales.

Welcome to the beginning of another Apple sales juggernaut. Unless ... Kapow! Bif! Bam! The bad press that erupted afterwards has a lasting impact.

The biggest controversy is over data reception. Apparently, if you're left-handed (I'm a leftie) or you hold it with a 'death grip', you earth the antenna, which seriously degrades cell signal strength.

Steve Jobs allegedly emailed someone "Just don't hold it that way". Ouch.

Apple later acknowledged, in an official way, that holding an iPhone 4 in certain ways can diminish the signal. Gripping any phone results in some attenuation of antenna performance, depending on the placement of the antennas in the device, said Apple. "This is a fact of life for every wireless phone."

Apple continued "If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."

But then Apple did itself no favours, refusing to give people 'bumper' cases if they had reception issues, instead asking for the retail fee of US$25 dollars for the bumper.

Then things got worse. In another statement, Apple told everyone that the signal strength was actually fine, but that the display of strength on iPhone was wrongly calibrated. It regularly showed it higher than it was. Ouch.

To Apple watchers like me, I appreciate Apple coming clean, even if it's a pretty shocking admission from a company that prides itself on doing things right. But to others, Apple's responses just fanned the flames.

But how bad is all this really?

Consumer Reports, an independent non-profit (and similar to our own Consumer organisation) mentioned in a blog post that the iPhone 4's alleged signals woes aren't unique to the iPhone.

" ... all phones are subject to interference from the human who is using them. And even if the alleged signal loss is real, there's an absence of hard evidence that iPhone 4 reception is problematic compared to past iPhones; indeed, there's evidence of just the opposite."

Spencer Webb, President of AntennaSys Inc, checked out the reception issue and concluded that the iPhone 4 is not nearly as hypersensitive to 'hand' effects as he had been led to believe.

The iPhone 4 seemed, to him, to be only as sensitive to hand effects as the first generation iPhone and placing electrical tape over the stainless steel band did nothing.

"Regardless of how we applied the Grip of Death, we could not cause the call to drop. I realise this says more about my local signal strength than it does about the phone."

AnandTech also took a thorough look at the iPhone 4's antenna performance by making a slight jailbreak hack that showed testers the actual decibel measurement (dBm) used for signal measurement instead of relying on the presentation of graphical bars.

Anand eventually determined that the iPhone 4 performs much better than the 3GS in situations where signal is very low, at - 113 dBm (1 bar).

But the jury's still out. Defenders and attackers will continue to make claims and it's hard to tell whether there will be a negative impact on the iPhone or not.

I suspect many people will eagerly upgrade as soon as possible. I will, despite being a leftie. The phone is the part I use least on iPhone, to be honest. It's everything else about iPhone that means so much to me - one device with GPS, camera, all those apps, texting ... and hey, I can take calls if I have to, all on one pocketable device. Excellent. I'm keen-as.

As for the rumours that iPad will go on sale here on the 16th and the iPhone 4 on the 23rd of this month - I have no idea if they're true, sorry.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com