14 DAY TRIAL // The iPhone 4 antenna fiasco has prompted the Cupertino, California-based maker of the handset to take a step forward and explain to the world what exactly is going on. Apple vehemently denies there are any issues with the iPhone 4 reception (or at least none that other cell phones don’t experience), and claims that dropping signal bars when holding the phone in certain ways are the result of a bad formula Apple uses to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display. The issue extends not only to iPhone 4, but iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS handsets as well, Apple revealed.
Apple is notorious for its secrecy, but not when it comes to false accusations. The Cupertino giant is always careful not to let speculative reports hit a boiling point for the Apple fan base, a good example being its June 23 statement on the White iPhone 4 topic. Now, an open “Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4” is available for everyone to read over at the company’s PR section.
After taking visitors through a routine acknowledging of facts, Apple proceeds with stressing that “gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.”
“We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising,” Apple continues, a few lines further down. “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong,” the phone’s maker reveals. “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.”
As such, Apple is replacing its inaccurate formula with one provided by the people at AT&T, Apple’s exclusive iPhone carrier in the US. A firmware fix is also on the way “within a few weeks.” The update, which “incorporates the corrected formula”, will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G, “since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone”, the Mac maker explains.
The letter ends with an apology from Apple “for any anxiety we may have caused”, and a reminder that unsatisfied customers will get a full refund, should they return their “undamaged” device within 30 days of their purchase. “We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do. Thank you for your patience and support,” Apple concludes.