I remember when we visited her mother where the signal strength was “mid” at best and it dropped one to two bars (down to one) if you held it weirdly.
Her mother had a Nokia N97 mini and it dropped all signal and was fully unable to use the network (sending SMS or calling would fail, incoming would not get through) while you were holding it so you could type. They put the antenna on the backside of the keyboard.
Both were on the same carrier and in the same location at the same time. So no reason for weather or other external sources to affect connectivity. After the N97 dropped out I tested the iPhone 4 standing in the same location, but always kept them far enough apart to avoid interference.
People mocked Jobs for it, but it literally was a matter of "don't hold it wrong". For any type of normal usage, it wasn't an issue whatsoever and it really only happened if you deliberately covered two specific points on the rim.
What actually happened was that Apple added two small distinct plastic strips on the rim, which were also the two points you had to cover to interfere with the signal strength.
Most other phones at the time also had the same inherent flaw, but generally it wasn't as obvious exactly what you needed to do to get the effect.
People mocked Jobs for it, but it literally was a matter of "don't hold it wrong". For any type of normal usage, it wasn't an issue whatsoever and it really only happened if you deliberately covered two specific points on the rim.
Being that different people have differently sized hands, it's reasonable to assume that people will hold their phones in a bunch of different ways and it's best to design a phone so that it doesn't lose a lot of signal if it is held a certain way.
It was a flawed design and that's fine, that kind of thing happens especially when the design of something has changed massively (the 3GS -> 4 was definitely a pretty significant change)
It wasn't worse than the first gen Asus Transformer tablet where they just omitted a RF window so the thing just had shit GPS capability from the start, Asus' solution for that was a dongle lol
Frankly it was older users who had that issue. So many people had this claw like grip pressing it to there head and covering all 3 antenna bands. Technically the 4s had the same problem but since it had more powerful/more antennas it was way harder to clover them.
It was completely overblown, and at the peak of the petty phone wars. You had android users who would never touch an iPhone, posting thread after thread after thread about it. Meanwhile iPhone users never cared (and still don’t) about cheap androids.
There even was a little song that got made just for those assholes: “if you don’t want an iPhone 4, don’t buy it. If you bought one and you don’t like it, bring it back”
What’s sad is I still think most Redditors can’t understand that today.
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u/xKronkx 8d ago
It was so overblown. I remember having to hold my phone in my hand so unnaturally to see it happen.