After the emergency conference that Apple held a while back, they uploaded several videos on the Apple official website detailing the ‘problem’ with the antenna. Both the emergency press conference and the videos were not appreciated not only by Apple’s own followers, but also by other mobile phone makers.
The issue with Apple’s iPhone is severe; touch a single part of phone where the antenna is supposedly exposed and users will actually lose about 90% of signal strength (as tested in a consumer research firm). It is actually common for phone antennas to lose signal when held by the hand –by about 10 to 20%. But a loss of 90% is not just unprecedented, but a clear sign that the phone is actually built broken.
Apple made a claim that the antenna issue affects all mobile phones and that there is really nothing wrong with the iPhone. This is a claim that other phone makers could not accept; after all, companies such as Samsung, Motorola, Research in Motion, Nokia and HTC spend plenty of time and resources figuring out ways of being able to design their phones properly. This means that in the entire history of mobile phone manufacturing only Apple came out with such a bad design.
Naturally, after the other companies reacted, Apple had very little to say for itself aside from their already existing arguments about the case –which was quickly losing ground. In what seems to be the most natural reaction, the videos uploaded on the official site have been taken down.
At this point, this topic is most likely to die out until the next iPhone 4 issue and while the media is now focused on the issues on the older iPhones caused by the iOS 4 update, it will not be long before September 30 comes around and Apple stops giving out free Bumpers –would they be offering free antenna repairs after that?
Tags: Antennagate Videos, Apple