Today, Apple held their anticipated press conference at 1:00 PST. The conference was held to discuss recent events with the iPhone 4, specifically, the antenna issues that customers were reportedly having. The antenna issues in question related to users not being able to hold the phone properly or required the use of a bumper to be held. Consumer Reports also wrote a post about how they couldn’t recommend the iPhone 4. As should have been expected, Apple held a 30 minute (though it was supposed to only be 15 minutes) conference in which they discussed that the issue with the iPhone was, get this, normal. About twenty minutes of the conference was literally spent discussing this one aspect and how every other so-called smartphone suffered from these “you’re holding it wrong” antenna issues. Personally, I think this was a load of BS, but whatever. Jobs also noted that only about 0.55% of customers relayed this issue to Apple Support, but as Michael Gillett mentioned on Twitter “is that because the others couldn't make calls?” Which, I can’t imagine it being this bad, but really, I don’t think too many people really called in, even if they were experiencing these issues. Note, however, that Jobs did mention that he received “1,000s” of e-mails from satisfied customers, whatever that’s worth.
Jobs did eventually apologize for the iPhone’s issues, though it may have been a bit rash, and announced that everyone would be able to receive a iPhone bumper for free. That is, until the offer expires on September 30. Those who purchased a bumper already will get some sort of refund for their purchase. Of course, this is really only a band-aid on the injury, it really doesn’t solve the underlying problem which is that users cannot hold the phone they way they want to. Apple did mention that they wanted to get to the root of the problem and didn’t want to just “bandage” it up. From what I can tell, however, that’s exactly what they’ve done.
All-in-all, the press conference was basically what I expected it to be. Steve Jobs said how great the iPhone 4 was and mentioned that every other smartphone apparently had the same issue. Even the free bumpers were a bit expected too (although, these less so than the earlier remarks in the speech).
Since the antenna issue (before the press conference, however), Apple has released iOS 4.01, which can be downloaded now for current iPhone 4 users. The update offers a new algorithm to calculate the number of signal bars that the iPhone displays, which may have lead to some of the drastic signal loss that users were experiencing to begin with. Some users report better signal quality (though fewer bars), while others don’t notice a difference at all.
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