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Posted under Gadget Reviews

“Apple made a boo-boo. Make it all better.” So reads the excellent tagline for the Antenna-Aid, a vinyl sticker for the iPhone 4 which covers the troublesome spot on the phone’s antenna-strip and may or may not improve reception.

The stickers, which come in a six-pack for $5, “work like magical” and a come in “colors you can see with the human retina.” What’s not to like? They’re even printed to look like band-aids, although their efficacy is not certain: The blurb states that the stickers are “for entertainment purposes only.”

Kidding aside, I’m interested in one of these to solve an iPad problem. Any snug, slide-in case for the iPad catches on the orientation-lock switch, which could conceivably cause some damage after a while. Currently I have a scrap Scotch-tape over the switch, but why use that when I can spend $5 on an Antenna-Aid?

Antenna Aid [Antenn-aid via Twitter]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

There’s really nothing I can say to make this amazing video any more entertaining. It really is the best thing a tech-nerd like you or me is going to see not today, but this week. A recreation of the entire iPhone story compressed into two hilarious minutes, the CGI-animation from Taiwanese NMA News characterizes Steve Jobs as a be-cowled Darth Vader and AT&T as a literal ball-and-chain around customers’ ankles.

I really don’t want to spoil the surprises, so just watch for Steve’s solution to the antenna problem (inspired by Alexander the Great?), and the police raid on the “Jason Chen residence.” Fantastic stuff. One warning. Put your coffee, or any other liquids, down, and away from the computer. You will spill them.

Reality distortion field remains strong with Steve Jobs after antenna-gate [NMA News on YouTube via ]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

After a press conference Friday addressing the iPhone 4’s antenna, Apple gave journalists a private tour of its radio-frequency test facility to provide a glimpse into the process of designing wireless products such as iPhones and iPads.

Led by Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert at Apple, the tour gave about 10 reporters and bloggers a peek at Apple’s custom-built wireless testing lab, which consists of several anechoic chambers to measure frequency of each device in various settings.

The tour was held after a press conference, in which Steve Jobs attempted to mitigate a media thunderstorm surrounding the iPhone 4’s purportedly flawed antenna by offering free cases to customers. During the conference, Jobs reinforced his original position that every phone has reception issues when held in certain ways, and he said a flawed software algorithm was making the iPhone 4’s attenuation look worse than it actually was.

Apple called the lab a “black” lab because it was a secret facility that even some employees were unaware of. The company made the lab public to show the world that Apple takes antenna design and wireless testing seriously.

“This is the most advanced lab for doing RF studies that anyone in the world has,” said Phil Schiller, vice president of marketing at Apple. “The designs we do wouldn’t be possible without it.”

Each test chamber is lined with blue pyramid-shaped styrofoam designed to absorb radio-frequency radiation. A robotic arm holding gadgets such as iPads and iPhones spins 360 degrees while a piece of analytics software (ironically running on Windows XP) visualizes the wireless activity of each device. Caballero said each gadget is run through a chamber for at least 24 hours.

In another process Apple also has people sitting inside test chambers, holding a device for about 30 minutes while software analyzes its wireless performance to evaluate its interactions with the human body.Synthetic heads, hands and even feet (think Nike +) are used for some of these tests as well.

Apple’s testing lab looks similar to Celecom’s cellphone radiation testing lab that Wired.com visited last year. Manufacturers who create wireless products must gain certification from an independent lab, which verifies that each device meets acceptable radiation standards set by the Federal Communications Commission.

The difference with Apple is it built its own lab for the sake of having full, granular oversight on the design (and redesign) of its products. Prototypes go through several iterations and tests before they’re finalized into Apple products. (Of course, having its own lab also helps Apple better guard its secrets.)

Before the iPhone 4 became an official product, prototypes of the device were tested in chambers for about two years until Apple settled on a design, Caballero said.

“It’s not trivial to design antennas,” said Caballero, reminiscing on the days older antennas had a single frequency.

After “passive” testing of devices inside isolated chambers, eventually Apple engineers drive around a large van containing synthetic hands gripping gadgets, with a laptop in the back running wireless analytics software to determine how the devices perform in real-world settings. Sometimes humans sit in the car seats holding the devices, too. During the tour, Apple showed a van containing a table full of synthetic hands gripping iPhone 4 devices.

“To do the most challenging design in the world, this is what we have to do,” said Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president of Macintosh hardware. “This is hardcore stuff.”

Apple earlier today also posted a description and video of its test lab.

Photos courtesy of Apple

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Steve Jobs was tipped off by Apple’s wireless expert about potential antenna problems of the iPhone 4 early in its design phase, according to Bloomberg.

Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert at Apple, told executives that the device’s external antenna design could lead to reception problems, a source told Bloomberg. The publication also cited a carrier partner who voiced similar concerns about the design. Both sources wished to remain anonymous.

Apple did not immediately return a request for comment.

Though the iPhone 4 has received positive reviews from critics, the device’s antenna design has repeatedly been under fire in the press. The device sports an external antenna contained in a steel band laced around the phone, and several customers and bloggers have reported that covering a gap in the lower-left corner causes reception loss, sometimes resulting in dropped calls.

Bloomberg’s report suggests that Jobs was well aware of a possible problem but steadfastly went forward with the new design.

It seems plausible that Caballero would voice such concern, because when the iPhone 4 was announced, a few antenna experts predicted that the external design would cause issues.

In response to the first wave of complaints, Apple’s press relations team published a letter claiming that the iPhone 4 was exaggerating both the highs and lows of its signal strength due to a software calibration issue. The company promised that a software update would remedy the problem.

However, the tipping point occurred when Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the iPhone 4 after running extensive lab tests and confirming that the iPhone 4 was more susceptible to attenuation than other handsets.

Late Wednesday evening, Apple PR invited select members of the press to attend a Friday press conference regarding the iPhone 4. The company did not share further details on what would be announced.

In an editorial, Wired.com staff argued that Apple should fix the hardware issue in future shipments of the product, as well as offer affected customers free cases or bumpers.

Wired.com will be covering Apple’s press conference Friday beginning at 10 a.m. PT. Stay tuned.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple has made a beta version of iOS 4.1 available to developers and it includes revised modem firmware which addresses the infamous antenna problem. How? By making the bars on the signal indicator bigger.

The image above was put together by MacRumors forum member Macduke. By taking before and after screenshots of the bars and combining them in Photoshop, Macduke came up with the graphic you see. You can clearly spot the difference in the first three bars. The smallest is now twice its original height, presumably indicating that the signal strength has doubled (kidding!).

This is the change that Apple promised in its press release about the iPhone 4’s antenna. Here’s the relevant part, which comes right after Apple admits it was displaying too many bars to make reception look better:

To fix this, we are adopting AT&Ts recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhones bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see. [emphasis added]

The new modem firmware is numbered 02.07.01 (the old one was 01.59.00), and may or may not improve actual reception. It seems unlikely that iOS 4.1 will be released to the public as soon as Friday (when Apple has an iPhone 4 press conference scheduled), as the update doesn’t just contain a modem fix but also brings new features: the Game Center game rankings app, along with tweaks to the spell check (you can switch it off) which will need to run through the usual rounds of beta testing.

Apple could release another, smaller update, and there are rumors to support that. Apple blog Razorianfly reports that there may be a 4.0.1 update, and this could come as soon as Friday.

It’s going to take some fancy PR footwork by Apple quieten the increasingly mainstream chatter about iPhone 4 signal strength, but if anyone has the PR department capable of such a feat it is Apple. I’m of the opinion that the new antenna design is actually better, and that Apple simply got busted for finessing the bars to make the signal look better.

Signal graphic [MacRumors Forums]

Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4 [Apple Press]

iOS 4.1 Beta Includes Apple’s Announced Signal Bar Changes [MacRumors]

iOS 4.1 (Beta 1) Now Available Worldwide [Razorianfly via Mac Stories]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The iPhone Death-Grip may be getting all the press, but it isn’t enough to stop Apple’s latest handset from knocking it out of the park in Consumer Reports’ latest smartphone round-up.

As honey-voiced Gadget Lab editor Dylan Tweney wrote yesterday, the antenna issues, which causes the iPhone 4’s signal to drop calamitously when it is held wrong, led Consumer Reports to say that it “cannot recommend” the phone to buyers.

Yet despite this seemingly fatal flaw, the iPhone 4 still tops the new Smart Phones Rating chart which was also published yesterday, ahead of BlackBerries and Android devices. What’s going on?

Apple got points for pretty much everything else on the new handset, from the front-facing camera to “sharpest display and best video camera we’ve seen on any phone”. The Consumer Reports blog post also points out the battery life (which bests the already high-scoring iPhone 3G) and the new game friendly gyroscope. Most of these features can already be found on many other phones. Consumer Reports just points out that Apple is implementing them better than anyone else.

These scores, along with Consumer Reports’ own fix for the Death Grip (a strip of gaffer tape), show that you may as well ignore griping about the antenna. I imagine that actual calls are a tiny part of iPhone usage anyway. You’ll need to pay to access the full smartphone report, and the teaser image on the front page seems to still be showing a previous report where the 8GB iPhone 3G is on top.

Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone 4 [Consumer Reports]

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

File this under “we told you so.”

Lab tests by Consumer Reports have confirmed what Wired and its readers have been telling you all along: The problem with the iPhone 4’s reception has nothing to do with how the signal-strength bars are represented, and everything to do with the phone’s faulty antenna design.

Consumer Reports took three separate iPhone 4s into the controlled environment of their radio frequency-insulated testing chamber. That room is insulated from all outside RF signals, so there’s nothing to interfer with the tests. Once inside the chamber, the testers set each iPhone to connect with a base station emulator — a piece of testing equipment that acts like one of AT&T’s cellphone towers. They then tested the iPhones’ ability to connect when held various ways.

“Our engineers found that when you place your finger on the gap between the two antennas on the lower left hand side of the iPhone 4, signal strength can drop by about 20 decibels — and that’s enough to drop a call,” CR reported in a video posted on its site (and embedded below).

In other words, it’s a design problem, not an issue with the way the iPhone 4 displays its signal strength bars, as Apple has tried to claim.

Significantly, CR’s tests showed that just a light finger touch was enough to trigger the problem — no sweaty-palmed “death grip” is required, as other testers have reported.

Further, CR’s tests place the blame squarely on Apple’s phone, not AT&T’s network. Because these tests were done in a controlled environment where no other devices were competing to connect with the base station, the reception problems can’t be attributed to network congestion or to a flaw in AT&T’s wireless network.

Because of those flaws, CR says it cannot recommend the iPhone 4 to consumers.

If you still want an iPhone 4, however, the magazine recommends placing a strip of duct tape over the corner of the phone — much like the electrical tape solution Wired reader Ryan Rhea recommended two weeks ago.

Photo: Thomas Barnes

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter, and Gadget Lab on Facebook.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Many customers are complaining that the iPhone 4’s antenna loses the signal when you hold it a certain way.They’re not delusional: Independent tests lend credence to the issue.

A study led by AnandTech saw a major drop in signal strength when the iPhone 4 was “cupped tightly,” covering a sensitive area in the lower left corner. The iPhone 4’s external band is actually two antennas one for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, and the other for voice and data and according to Anandtech, touching the point in the lower left, where the two antennas meet, causes attenuation.

“The fact of the matter is that either the most sensitive region of the antenna should have an insulative coating, or everyone should use a case,” Anandtech wrote. “For a company that uses style heavily as a selling point, the latter isn’t an option. And the former would require an unprecedented admission of fault on Apple’s part.”

Immediately after the iPhone 4’s release, several customers reported that covering the handset in the bottom left corner caused major signal loss, signified by dropped bars on the screen.

Criticism about the iPhone 4’s reception doesn’t look good for Apple. For years, dissatisfied customers have quibbled about the smartphone’s spotty 3G network performance. Apple claimed the iPhone 4’s new antenna design would significantly improve reception. Already, the erratic behavior of the iPhone 4 antenna has spawned lawsuits.

In a canned response, Apple said all phones experience attenuation when held in different positions.

Is it a non-issue, as Steve Jobs suggests, or is it a major design flaw? Going beyond anecdotal experiences,Anandtech managed to hack together a way to get the iPhone 4 to display actual signal strength rather than reception bars. (The reception bars, many have explained, are a poor indicator for actual signal strength.)

AnandTech then held the iPhone 4 in five different ways cupping tightly, holding naturally, open palm, resting on an open platform and holding naturally inside a case and recorded results for each position. The blog ran the same tests with an iPhone 3GS and a Nexus One.

The results: All phones exhibited attenuation behavior in different positions, but the iPhone 4 did show a greater dropoff in signal strength in every holding position compared to the iPhone 3GS.

However, the blog noted that the iPhone 4’s reception is definitely better in low-signal situations than the other two phones. In short, the iPhone 4 gets a much stronger signal overall compared to the iPhone 3GS and the Nexus One, but that strength is greatly hampered by attenuation when held in different positions.

“Reception is absolutely definitely improved,” AnandTech wrote. “I felt like I was going places no iPhone had ever gone before. There’s no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.”

Corroborating AnandTech’s findings, antenna expert Richard Gaywood ran a different test gauging the iPhone 4’s speed in different holding positions and came to similar conclusions. Gaywood’s tests suggest that the problem is greatest when signal strength is already low.

“I think its pretty clear that there was still a performance penalty from gripping the phone in my bare left hand, despite the strong signal conditions,” Gaywood wrote.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

With its weird reception troubles that seem to be triggered just by touching it, the iPhone 4 is like Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “It could get wrecked, stolen, scratched, breathed on wrong… a pigeon could shit on it! Who knows?”

The best solution so far seems to be Apple’s Bumper case, a $30 strip of rubber that wraps around the steel antenna band and stops your clammy hands from sucking out the signal. But it’s $30. Because of this, Oliver Nelson decided to make his own Bumper from one of those cheap rubber bracelets found pretty much everywhere, or by donating to a charity.

The case is as simple as it could be. Just find yourself a bracelet (look for one measuring “about 1.125-inches long and about 0.125-inches wide”) and stretch it around the outside of the phone. Oliver also made a few cut-outs so he could reach the headphone jack, the dock connector and the mute-button. Done, and you just saved yourself around $29.

In fact, Oliver saved himself the full $30: his bracelet came free, bundled, somewhat ironically, with an iPad charger. Still, even if you pay full-price, its likely that the money will be going to a good cause, and not into Apple’s pockets.

DIY: Ghetto iPhone 4 case from a 99c bracelet? [The iPhone Guru]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

There’s an old joke about a man who visits a doctor, complaining that his arm hurts whenever he moves it a certain way. The doctor’s response? “Stop moving it that way.”

That pretty much sums up Apple’s response to the people who have complained that holding the iPhone 4 in their left hand can cause signal strength to fall, dropping calls and reducing bandwidth. For these people — over 40 of whom have contacted Wired.com — touching the lower left corner of the iPhone’s metal band is the source of the problem.

Here’s what Sascha Segan on Gearlog.com said Apple had to say about that:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your Phone 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.

Despite numerous reports from Wired.com readers, we have been trying to replicate the problem without success. According to Wired.com writer Brian X. Chen, if he grips the iPhone 4 firmly in his left hand while downloading a web page, one or two bars disappear from the signal strength indicator. I haven’t been able to reproduce the problem at all.

Segan was able to reproduce the problem using what he calls a “death grip,” holding it “in a slightly sweaty left hand, with my fingers covering the three black lines on the phone’s edge and the bottom left corner in my palm.” In that grip, he guesses, signal strength drops by about 3 to 5 dBm.

Solution: Don’t hold your phone in a death grip, especially if you’re left-handed and inclined to have sweaty palms.

And if you’re one of the people who sees this problem even when holding the phone gently, put your iPhone 4 in a protective case — or add a strip of black electrical tape to the lower left edge. Both break the electrical contact between the phone’s antenna and your skin, and prevent the signal-loss from happening.

Photo courtesy Thomas Barnes

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Wired.com reader Ryan Rhea says he found a way to double the download speed of his new iPhone 4 with nothing more than black electrician’s tape.

Rhea, clearly a graduate of the Home Depot School of Gadget Hacks, simply applied a thin strip of black tape on the lower left corner of the phone’s outer metal band, starting right below the volume buttons and extending down to the edge of the speaker on the bottom of the phone.

That was enough to stop the reception problem reported by many iPhone 4 customers. For those with this problem, touching the lower left corner of their new phone causes signal strength to drop, often cutting off calls and sharply decreasing data download speeds.

Wired.com has not been able to duplicate the problem, although more than 30 readers have reported experiencing it.

That metal band forms the phone’s antenna, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained when announcing the iPhone 4 earlier this month. And while touching a radio or TV antenna can often improve reception, by making the conductive surface of your skin into an extension of the antenna, it seems to have the opposite effect on the iPhone 4.

Several readers have reported that putting the iPhone 4 into a protective case, such as the $30 “bumper” case sold by Apple, solves the problem.

The electrical tape achieves the same result at a much lower cost, by putting an electrical insulator between you and the phone’s antenna. In Rhea’s case, his 3G download speed as reported by Testmyiphone.com went from 0.41 Mbps without the tape to 0.82 Mbps with the tape (in both cases, with the phone gripped firmly in his left hand).

The cost for a roll of electrical tape? About $4 for a 66-foot roll of 3/4″ tape, which should be enough to fix your iPhone — and about 790 others.

As a bonus, electrical tape also works great for fixing nerdy glasses.

Photo courtesy Ryan Rhea

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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The iPhone 4 has finally arrived here in Gadget Lab. Some of you may have seen this before.

We’ve spent only a few hours with the iPhone 4, but our first impressions of the device are quite positive. The 960-by-640 screen is gorgeous, and the thinner profile feels nice in the pocket. FaceTime video conferencing was problematic probably because of our weak Wi-Fi network here but once it got working it was neat.

We’ll have a full review of the iPhone 4 by Friday, but for now enjoy the video above re-introducing the famous device at the center of perhaps the greatest drama in gadget history.

This episode of the Gadget Lab video podcast was produced by Annaliza Savage, with editing by Michael Lennon and audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso. If you want the audio version of this podcast, subscribe to the Gadget Lab audio podcast on iTunes.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Those of you still holding out for a white iPhone 4 are going to have to be mighty patient. Citing manufacturing problems, Apple has officially stated that the white version of the sellout new iPhone won’t be in stores for another three weeks. Here’s the entire, short press release:

White models of Apples new iPhone 4 have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected, and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.

My assumption had been that Apple has just switched all production over to the black handset just to keep up with the extraordinary demand. Now it would seem that there is some problem with making the glass case white.

This may be similar to an issue with the old iBook of several years ago. These were made from clear polycarbonate and painted on the inside, presumably to avoid scratches. The trouble was that the paint wasn’t always applied so well. One of mine had a rather patchy finish.

Still, at least now we know how long it will be, and those who want the white iPhone can choose to wait or just change their mind and get a black one. But then, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you had to wait until mid-July for one of those, too.

Statement by Apple on White iPhone 4 [Apple]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews