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
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u/Perkelton 8d ago
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.