7 ms·

The $0.001 DIY iPhone 4 Antenna Fix

58 points by donohoe 16y ago

nirmal 16y ago
Marco Arment also has a solution: http://www.marco.org/733115343 http://www.marco.org/733115343 For those who want to make a clearly visible statement about their antenna woes. :)
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Am I the only one confused by the combination of "this happens to every phone" with fixes, including both this and the official one(s), which are workarounds to prevent shorting the exposed antennas, which no other phone has?
- jws 16y ago
  RF energy is strange stuff. The coupling to your hand will change its radiation pattern and reception sensitivity. For any phone, where you put your hand changes its RF abilities. The engineers try to make it so common hand holds aren't too bad. If you are old enough to remember analog TV and "rabbit ears" then you might remember the frustration of trying to adjust your rabbit ears to get good reception on a station. Sometimes it would be great while you were standing near the antenna, but bad when you walked away. Sometimes people would resort to distorting the patterns directly with aluminum foil tags on the rabbit ears. The same thing happens to phones, though the distances are much smaller because of the frequencies. If you want to experiment, remember that the direction to the current tower is also important in this system. There is no reason to believe your phone receives uniformly well in a polar pattern about your vertical axis. Go someplace with less than full bars. Get a grip. Turn 360 degrees slowly enough for the bars to respond, record data at various angles. Try a different grip. Repeat.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Yes, I get that stuff. Now how does attaching a bit of tape over the gap, or avoiding bridging the gap with your hand play into that? It's like they're saying "yes this is a common problem in phones that we're well aware of and which our unique new "genius" design makes worse" without wanting to actually admit the latter bit. So you end up with strange-double talk advice that tells you how to fix problems they're not admitting to having.
    - jws 16y ago
      Most importantly for the meme, that little gap in the metal provides a focal point for people to stare at and say Well there's your problem! It isn't nearly as interesting as "hand vaguely cupped about the lower third with the pinky extended and then curled back touching the bottom left side while up against my face" (which is the transmission killer on my first generation iPhone. If our connection breaks up, there is no reason to assume it was an accident.) It seems likely that plain old electrical conductivity is in play here. Some people's skin conducts much better than others and anecdotally tape insulation helps. So that is a different mechanism from most(all?) other phones.
rriepe 16y ago
Is this a joke that I'm not getting? Scotch tape? Really? "This problem isn't real, but here's how you fix it." He also completely dismisses public perception. Did everyone forget Toyota's mess so quickly? If there's a perceived problem with your product, then there's a problem with your product.
- martythemaniak 16y ago
  I can only imagine the reaction if a major Apple competitor had the same problem. Apple gets a pass on everything.
  - mcav 16y ago
    If a competitor's phone was as good as the iPhone 4 in all other areas, I suspect they'd get a little bit of a pass too.
    - fname 16y ago
      ...and that's how the monopoly begins. Seriously, that type of thinking echos the same problem that Microsoft had. It's not our software, you just don't know how to use it.
      - jonhohle 16y ago
        On one hand, it doesn't appear that they are getting a pass at all. This seems like they've gotten far more bad press for it than is necessary. On the other hand, other device makers should really step up their game. I don't like the idea of a new computing monopoly, but who is out there seriously competing with Apple right now? (If what the other device makers is doing currently is competing, Apple doesn't have anything to worry about for a while).
  - ugh 16y ago
    That’s really what you think? Really? What do you expect would happen if some Android phone had similar issues? I don’t think a lot more than this shitstorm. A few articles on Gizmodo and Engadget maybe, nothing like the widespread coverage we are seeing here.
watmough 16y ago
I've always held my 2G at the top of the phone, primarily to avoid attenuating the wi-fi noticeably, but also to reduce the energy being absorbed by my hand. Carrying this over to the iPhone 4.0 appears to completely avoid this 'problem'. It's a shame, because the phone is fantastic and in the areas of magazine-like screen quality, running multiple apps, speed and build, has exceeded my expectations wildly.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
pierrefar 16y ago
This is sad in a way: people just spent a few hundred dollars on a shiny (literally) device and now they need to tape it in a very visible place so that it works consistently.
mattmcegg 16y ago
EVO here I come!
ntoshev 16y ago
My iPhone 3GS (and probably all of them) have a somewhat similar problem: when I hold it at the bottom I cover the microphone with my palm and the other side can't hear me. When they start asking me to repeat, I change the way I hold it. Not sure how I discovered this is the problem, maybe other people think they have poor reception. But there was no media hype about this one. Maybe if Steve Jobs didn't mention the innovative antenna design, no one would have noticed.
- coned88 16y ago
  It's understandable if one covers the microphone that it will not work properly. In this case people are just holding the device like they do naturally. Both are instances of bad user design.
blhack 16y ago
Could you imagine buying a brand new Mercedes CL550, finding out that if you grip the steering wheel with your left hand it will shut the car down, and then having Mercedes insist that there is no problem and that you should buy a steering wheel cover? This is so far beyond unacceptable for apple. I cannot believe (well yes, actually, I can) that they're not doing a recall on this or, at the very least, providing users with a free case. The other tragedy of this whole thing (or maybe it's just brilliance on behalf of apple) is that the stories about the antenna issue are all overpowering the issue that 3G users are having with iOS4. V4 renders the phone slow and buggy. Opening SMS messages will sometimes crash the SMS program. Things are slow, opening the ipod function can take upwards of 10 seconds sometimes. Really really really really bad form apple. The last 6 months have been terrible for them.
- mrinterweb 16y ago
  I heard Mercedes said to solve the left hand issue is to just not steer using your left hand. Using the left hand for steering has serious side-effects such as not looking as cool, limited window waving abilities, and inability to ash a cigarette out the window while driving.
  - eru 16y ago
    > limited window waving abilities Only on the continent. On the isle you need your left hand for the stick shift anyway.
- CapitalistCartr 16y ago
  "The last 6 months have been terrible for them." They've sold a million IPads a month, are on track to sell that many Iphone 4s, untold millions of Ipods, etc. and the press is gushing over them like they're the newest teen idol sensation. I want to have a terrible 6 months like that!
  - blhack 16y ago
    Ha. I guess I should have said it has been a terrible month for their consumers (since that is what I actually meant; terrible 6 months as in they've been terrible).
mkramlich 16y ago
I hate it when someone on the Internet starts being practical.
commieneko 16y ago
Like my idol, Léon Theremin, I will use this "defect" to develop a special app that allows the user to play music by stroking and caressing his/her iPhone on its various "sensitive" radio receptors. Then we can sit back and wait for our very own Clara Rockmore to emerge...
coin 16y ago
All this fuss over the perceived problem of the antenna, it reeks of premature optimization. Has anyone actually observed this being a problem while on a phone call? I'm not talking bars, since bars are a very loose indication of signal strength.
- Geee 16y ago
  Phone calls generally work even with very bad reception. More important here is the data transfer over 3G which has been observed to slow down significantly. The "death grip" is exactly how you would hold the phone when browsing.

58 points by donohoe 16y ago

Marco Arment also has a solution: http://www.marco.org/733115343 http://www.marco.org/733115343 For those who want to make a clearly visible statement about their antenna woes. :)

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

Am I the only one confused by the combination of "this happens to every phone" with fixes, including both this and the official one(s), which are workarounds to prevent shorting the exposed antennas, which no other phone has?

jws 16y ago
RF energy is strange stuff. The coupling to your hand will change its radiation pattern and reception sensitivity. For any phone, where you put your hand changes its RF abilities. The engineers try to make it so common hand holds aren't too bad. If you are old enough to remember analog TV and "rabbit ears" then you might remember the frustration of trying to adjust your rabbit ears to get good reception on a station. Sometimes it would be great while you were standing near the antenna, but bad when you walked away. Sometimes people would resort to distorting the patterns directly with aluminum foil tags on the rabbit ears. The same thing happens to phones, though the distances are much smaller because of the frequencies. If you want to experiment, remember that the direction to the current tower is also important in this system. There is no reason to believe your phone receives uniformly well in a polar pattern about your vertical axis. Go someplace with less than full bars. Get a grip. Turn 360 degrees slowly enough for the bars to respond, record data at various angles. Try a different grip. Repeat.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Yes, I get that stuff. Now how does attaching a bit of tape over the gap, or avoiding bridging the gap with your hand play into that? It's like they're saying "yes this is a common problem in phones that we're well aware of and which our unique new "genius" design makes worse" without wanting to actually admit the latter bit. So you end up with strange-double talk advice that tells you how to fix problems they're not admitting to having.
  - jws 16y ago
    Most importantly for the meme, that little gap in the metal provides a focal point for people to stare at and say Well there's your problem! It isn't nearly as interesting as "hand vaguely cupped about the lower third with the pinky extended and then curled back touching the bottom left side while up against my face" (which is the transmission killer on my first generation iPhone. If our connection breaks up, there is no reason to assume it was an accident.) It seems likely that plain old electrical conductivity is in play here. Some people's skin conducts much better than others and anecdotally tape insulation helps. So that is a different mechanism from most(all?) other phones.

rriepe 16y ago

Is this a joke that I'm not getting? Scotch tape? Really? "This problem isn't real, but here's how you fix it." He also completely dismisses public perception. Did everyone forget Toyota's mess so quickly? If there's a perceived problem with your product, then there's a problem with your product.

martythemaniak 16y ago
I can only imagine the reaction if a major Apple competitor had the same problem. Apple gets a pass on everything.
- mcav 16y ago
  If a competitor's phone was as good as the iPhone 4 in all other areas, I suspect they'd get a little bit of a pass too.
  - fname 16y ago
    ...and that's how the monopoly begins. Seriously, that type of thinking echos the same problem that Microsoft had. It's not our software, you just don't know how to use it.
    - jonhohle 16y ago
      On one hand, it doesn't appear that they are getting a pass at all. This seems like they've gotten far more bad press for it than is necessary. On the other hand, other device makers should really step up their game. I don't like the idea of a new computing monopoly, but who is out there seriously competing with Apple right now? (If what the other device makers is doing currently is competing, Apple doesn't have anything to worry about for a while).
- ugh 16y ago
  That’s really what you think? Really? What do you expect would happen if some Android phone had similar issues? I don’t think a lot more than this shitstorm. A few articles on Gizmodo and Engadget maybe, nothing like the widespread coverage we are seeing here.

watmough 16y ago

I've always held my 2G at the top of the phone, primarily to avoid attenuating the wi-fi noticeably, but also to reduce the energy being absorbed by my hand. Carrying this over to the iPhone 4.0 appears to completely avoid this 'problem'. It's a shame, because the phone is fantastic and in the areas of magazine-like screen quality, running multiple apps, speed and build, has exceeded my expectations wildly.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

pierrefar 16y ago

This is sad in a way: people just spent a few hundred dollars on a shiny (literally) device and now they need to tape it in a very visible place so that it works consistently.

mattmcegg 16y ago

EVO here I come!

ntoshev 16y ago

My iPhone 3GS (and probably all of them) have a somewhat similar problem: when I hold it at the bottom I cover the microphone with my palm and the other side can't hear me. When they start asking me to repeat, I change the way I hold it. Not sure how I discovered this is the problem, maybe other people think they have poor reception. But there was no media hype about this one. Maybe if Steve Jobs didn't mention the innovative antenna design, no one would have noticed.

coned88 16y ago
It's understandable if one covers the microphone that it will not work properly. In this case people are just holding the device like they do naturally. Both are instances of bad user design.

blhack 16y ago

Could you imagine buying a brand new Mercedes CL550, finding out that if you grip the steering wheel with your left hand it will shut the car down, and then having Mercedes insist that there is no problem and that you should buy a steering wheel cover? This is so far beyond unacceptable for apple. I cannot believe (well yes, actually, I can) that they're not doing a recall on this or, at the very least, providing users with a free case. The other tragedy of this whole thing (or maybe it's just brilliance on behalf of apple) is that the stories about the antenna issue are all overpowering the issue that 3G users are having with iOS4. V4 renders the phone slow and buggy. Opening SMS messages will sometimes crash the SMS program. Things are slow, opening the ipod function can take upwards of 10 seconds sometimes. Really really really really bad form apple. The last 6 months have been terrible for them.

mrinterweb 16y ago
I heard Mercedes said to solve the left hand issue is to just not steer using your left hand. Using the left hand for steering has serious side-effects such as not looking as cool, limited window waving abilities, and inability to ash a cigarette out the window while driving.
- eru 16y ago
  > limited window waving abilities Only on the continent. On the isle you need your left hand for the stick shift anyway.
CapitalistCartr 16y ago
"The last 6 months have been terrible for them." They've sold a million IPads a month, are on track to sell that many Iphone 4s, untold millions of Ipods, etc. and the press is gushing over them like they're the newest teen idol sensation. I want to have a terrible 6 months like that!
- blhack 16y ago
  Ha. I guess I should have said it has been a terrible month for their consumers (since that is what I actually meant; terrible 6 months as in they've been terrible).

mkramlich 16y ago

I hate it when someone on the Internet starts being practical.

commieneko 16y ago

Like my idol, Léon Theremin, I will use this "defect" to develop a special app that allows the user to play music by stroking and caressing his/her iPhone on its various "sensitive" radio receptors. Then we can sit back and wait for our very own Clara Rockmore to emerge...

coin 16y ago

All this fuss over the perceived problem of the antenna, it reeks of premature optimization. Has anyone actually observed this being a problem while on a phone call? I'm not talking bars, since bars are a very loose indication of signal strength.

Geee 16y ago
Phone calls generally work even with very bad reception. More important here is the data transfer over 3G which has been observed to slow down significantly. The "death grip" is exactly how you would hold the phone when browsing.