Poking Holes in Apple's iPhone Antenna Explanation

Apple now blames reception issues that many new iPhone 4 customers are experiencing on a software miscalculation rather than on hardware design. But will a software update really fix the problems that many customers are reporting?

I'm not sure I am buying Apple's explanation.

Since the iPhone 4 launched last week, thousands of consumers have complained that when gripping the phone around the lower left hand corner of the device, the signal degrades or calls are dropped. Apple acknowledged the problem, and explained that customers were simply covering up the antenna with their hand. CEO Steve Jobs told consumers the best way to fix the issue is to hold the phone differently. His other piece of advice: Buy a $29 rubber bumper to put around the phone so you don't cover up the antenna.

Now the company says its engineers have made a "stunning" discovery. Reception is poor and calls may be dropped because not only are people holding the phone wrong, but they also think they have a better signal than they do. In the statement, Apple says that it has made a mistake in the formula that calculates the number of bars that display the signal strength on all of its iPhones.

"We were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong," it said in a statement. "Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place."

Apple said that a fix, which will correct the issue not just for iPhone 4 phones, but also 3GS and 3G iPhones, will be available within a few weeks.

But hold on a second. How exactly will this ensure that the new iPhone4 doesn't drop a call? The answer is that it probably won't.

"If the only thing that Apple is changing in this software fix is how the bars are calculated than this simply a pacifier for people who like to watch bars," said Spencer Webb, president of AntennaSys, an antenna design firm. "And signal 'bar watching' is a dangerous way to draw technical conclusions about a phone's reception."

Indeed, the bars that one sees displayed on any cell phone can be misleading. This is not just an issue for the iPhone, but for all cell phones, Webb explains.

Cell phones are usually within range of multiple cell sites. Cell towers in these areas are constantly pinging devices and handing off signals. So it's difficult to truly assess the strength of a signal simply from the bars displayed on the phone. There are also other issues to consider when talking about reception, such as how crowded the network is.

Any of these factors can cause a call to be dropped. And when customer are talking about low signal strength and poor reception, dropped calls is what they are really talking about. If the signal is weak and the call stays connected, no one cares or notices (except that a weak signal will also run down the battery on the phone faster.)

Customers look to the bars on their phone to help them gauge the likelihood that they can make the call and keep the call going.

So Apple's explanation that it is changing the way it calculates the bars is somewhat misleading. If calls are being dropped then rejiggering the calculations for the display will not change the outcome of that event.

This leads us to the real problem, which is the fact that the iPhone 4 may be more sensitive to antenna disruption than other phones.

Apple has admitted that covering the little line on the outside of the iPhone 4 can disrupt calls. Numerous tests have been done, and even CNET has replicated the results of these tests.

In Apple's defense, covering up the antenna of any cellular device could degrade the quality of the signal and ultimately lead to dropped calls. In the olden days, when people walked around with big brick phones, the antennas stuck out of the top. Even early flip phones had antennas that could slide up. As aesthetic tastes have changed, antennas have disappeared from view.

But cell phones are wireless devices, and all wireless devices need antennas. The problem with making the devices slick and cool-looking is that people don't know where the antenna is, and they inadvertently cover them up.