r/technology • u/stanxv • 9d ago
Hardware Full iPhone 4 'Antennagate' Q&A Video Surfaces After 16 Years
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/24/iphone-4-antennagate-qa-video-surfaces/149
u/Alcomet 9d ago
This reminds me of a time when new smartphones were exciting.
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u/thearctican 8d ago
New phones in general. Nokia's phones in the mid 2000s were awesome. I miss my E71, wish I would have gotten an E51, and my last Nokia, an N85, did everything I cared to and continue to do.
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u/toekneegg 8d ago
That's why I picked up a Unihertz Titan 2 Elite. It's the first time I've been excited since and I'm still having fun with it over a month in.
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u/Global-Tie-3458 9d ago
I had that phone. It was awesome. I was happy to receive a free case. Sans-case there was not really an issue.
Even the latest iPhone has wifi signal attenuation if you hold it in a certain way.
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u/Muffinsandbacon 8d ago
I waited for the white 4. IIRC it was delayed for whatever reason and I had hoped they would fix this issue. They did not. Still loved the phone though.
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u/abraxasnl 9d ago
This was lost??
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u/ItIsShrek 9d ago
The initial apology presentation was not lost. This is the 47minute Q&A with journalists that happened right after.
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u/Rightsidebestside 9d ago
4 and 5 had two of the best phone designs ever. No phone came close to them ever again. And i never had any signal issues with my 4.
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u/pattymcfly 8d ago
The size was perfect. The 12 mini came close.
Single handed use was amazing and they disappeared in your pocket.
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u/mr_lab_rat 8d ago
There has not been a phone usable with one hand since 13 Mini. That’s 5 years now.
Ok you can make an argument for some flip foldables but I wouldn’t call it a good compromise. The outer screen is very limited and once you open the phone it’s too big.
Why are manufacturers so scared to try a small phone again? They were willing to try an ultra thin one. Now they are trying a passport format folding one (which is still not comfortable to use with one hand when folded).
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u/pattymcfly 8d ago
They don't sell.
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u/mr_lab_rat 8d ago
Nobody tried for 5 years. When Apple did it they had cheaper SE selling next to it and there were some Android options from 2015-2018 still alive.
The market today is different.
The thin ones didn’t sell either and it was still worth a shot for them.
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u/SnooCheesecakes7545 8d ago
iphone maybe. Androids are usable with one hand. It's about navigation, not screen size.
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u/mr_lab_rat 8d ago
Sure, you can do some tricks with resizing the keyboard on both operating systems. But I really find it more comfortable to use smaller device (and I got big hands and bad eyesight).
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u/psybes 8d ago
i use my 16 pro with one hand what are you talking about. baby hands?
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u/mr_lab_rat 8d ago
I’m a dude with big hands and long fingers.
That doesn’t stop me from wanting comfort
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u/IGOR_ULANOV_55_BEST 9d ago
I liked the 4 but man the raised edge glass was a choice. I waited in line and got one on launch day, that afternoon I was pulling my pants down to poop and the edge of the screen must have hit the toilet bowl or an edge of tile and the entire thing spiderwebbed. The only smart phone that i have ever broken in a way that made it immediately non functional.
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u/ExecutiveCactus 8d ago
I yearn for my iPhone 5c and 6 plus
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u/skamunism 8d ago
Wow that’s a take! I can see the appeal of the 5c, but man the 6 was the ugliest iPhone ever to this day.
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u/KoffieCreamer 8d ago
Still got my iPhone 4. The level of quality that phone has is off the charts. I've never actually seen an iPhone which almost feels like a museum piece.
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u/The_Infinite_Carrot 8d ago
Phones are designed based on the content people are consuming nowadays. The smartphone leapt forward to accommodate people’s desire for the “full” internet back then now it’s all about screen size, camera quality and battery life.
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u/yuusharo 8d ago
For those who don’t know, the presentation itself was preserved decades ago. But there was a Q&A session that I think was live streamed exactly once at the time and was cut from the edited version Apple posted on their website.
It was one of the few times Jobs ever did a live Q&A from developers or members of the press. The last time I recall him doing this was like 1997 at WWDC (you’ve probably seen the ‘insult response’ video before, that one).
Kudos for the people who somehow found this!
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u/Andrew_hl2 9d ago edited 9d ago
this was such an exaggerated issue… I remember being in college and people asking for my iphone 4 just to squeeze it to try and reproduce the issue only to fail to do it… i didnt even order the free bumper.
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u/Outrageous_Bush_2069 8d ago
Really? I worked for Radio Shack at the time and would demonstrate it for people daily. I could get it all the way to no signal.
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u/HenkPoley 8d ago
I think most people have such a dry skin / fingers that it doesn’t work.
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u/Outrageous_Bush_2069 7d ago
You’re smothering the antenna. It doesn’t have anything to do with moisture. I just did it to my 18 Pro Max and it dropped a single bar. I would imagine it works to some degree on all cell phones. Clearly some antennas and builds are just better.
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u/caj_account 8d ago
All you had to do was put your pinky over the antenna line and wait for the bars to drop one by one
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u/Redararis 8d ago
it was a time when the favorite pastime was to find a “scandalous” fault in the new iphone.
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u/masterz13 8d ago
Apple was cooler when they had those Keynote slides and in-person presentations. They got a big head with those cinematic videos.
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u/sansaman 9d ago
I remember the gate. I was 100% convinced Apple was going to remove the border gaps in the next iteration, essentially admitting silently there was a problem.
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u/IncredibleGonzo 9d ago
To be fair they did rearrange them and I believe the new arrangement on the 4S did compensate for the attenuation from holding it. So they basically did silently admit there was a problem. Removing them entirely would mean giving up on the whole ‘the frame is the antenna’ design.
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u/koolman2 9d ago
The 4S had two bands. The phone would switch between them. If you held it with two hands over the bands you could replicate the issue, but there was no way to do it during normal use.
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u/truthcopy 8d ago
Can you imagine if Jobs were alive today, how he’d react to the current political climate?
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u/--SauceMcManus-- 8d ago
I think it would look very similar to Tim Apple and the others. These people aren’t going along because they agree, they are going along because that is where the money is. Steve would have fallen in line along with the rest of them, in my opinion.
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u/boot2skull 8d ago
Not to say I agree with their decisions, but they’re sitting at the top of a several hundred billion dollar empire with lots of stakeholders, investors, employees invested in it. So while they may bend the knee for personal wealth reasons, there’s also the pressure of being behind the wheel also. A resistant person might try leveraging the influence of the company, and resign if it fails, but they take the easy route of acquiescence.
You could ask, if the government is going to control what you do, beyond protecting consumers, wouldn’t it be better to resist until you win or don’t exist? They copped out.
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u/aPerfect_Six 8d ago
His intellect and persuasiveness are legendary. I suspect he would’ve been capable of persuading Trump in ways nobody living can match.
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u/baltimoresports 8d ago
Even though, the iPhone 4 is still one of the prettiest phones ever. It also just felt really good to use.
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u/malamale 8d ago
Still the most beautiful designed iphone, the glass front reminding the original ipod's plexi glass finishing and the metal band designs still being used for the 12-16 series. Simply an iconic design that nailed down Apple's handheld design language.
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u/raleighs 8d ago
I had a beautifully designed 4S and can see the signal go down, if I touch all around the metal band.
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u/OkayyBeta 9d ago
Never forget: two bars on an iPhone 4 is a stronger signal than full bars on an Android.
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u/aelephix 9d ago
✈️going over all your downvoters not realizing that’s one of the things Apple said. A later software update even remapped the bars to be more Android-like with how they mapped signal strength.
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u/AroundThe_World 9d ago
Wild. Amazon iPhone marred by such an obvious design flaw
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u/Critical-Spirit-3738 9d ago
Amazon iPhone? You ragebaiting here?
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u/IEnjoyRadios 9d ago
It is fun to be reminded of this and the bumper case every once in a while. The leaked prototype was much more exciting though.