Overall, this shows that the only answer Apple has to the antenna problem is to put a case/bumper on the iPhone 4. If you don't like case on your device and you are suffering from signal loss issue you have two option - forget about the issue and enjoy the iPhone or return the iPhone before 30 days period ends. It looks like Apple has something up their sleeve for September as the free case program end on 30th Sept.
- The press conference is over.
- It ending, Steve says "Okay so I think this is it. Has that helped? I wish we could have done it sooner, but then you wouldn't have had anything to write about."
- A:Yes
- Q: Will the bumper offer extend outside of the US?
- Steve: I always have, and you know, the address is out there and I've always emailed people back. I try to reply to some of them because they're our customers. But now people post them to the web... and some people just make things up. So don't believe everything you read!
- Q: You've been communicating with customers through email quite a bit -- how is that impacting how you're dealing with these issues.
- A:The short answer is don't know.
- Q: Few years back Apple released a software fix that improved reception, can you do it again?
- A: We'll hold financial conference for Q2 next week.
- Q: What kind of impact do you think this will have?
- Steve adds "One many statements lately that fall into that category."
- iPhone Software VP Forstall says " statement is patently false. Can we continue to tune the way the baseband interacts with the network? Yes, and we do this all the time. But that statement is untrue."
- A: We just spent the last hour going through how the iPhone 4 drops only 1 more call per hundred than the 3GS. … Go talk to the Times, because you guys talk to yourselves a lot, and they’re just making this stuff up.
- Q: NY Times says this might have a software fix, will software help?
- A: Extremely small, even lower than AT&T numbers.
- Q: Return rates at Apple stores?
- A: When you love your customers, nothing is off the table. But we want to data driven. We send engineers to people's homes with test equipment and take logs to get to the root of the problem.
- Q: Did you consider a recall?
- A: You can go on the web and look at pictures of Nokia phones that ship with stickers on the back that say "don't touch here" -- you can go on YouTube and see these. We should you three phones today, all good phones. So right now the state of the art of the entire industry is that no one has solved this problem. Would I like Apple to be first? Yes. Can we make it better right now? Maybe, we'll see.
- Q:Is there a hardware redesign in this generation that could fix this problem?
- Steve says Apple has been around 30 years. Haven't we earned the credibility and trust that we're going to take care of our users. But the reaction has been so overblown... We could actually use your help here.
- Steve adds we are engineering company, we think like engineers, and we think it's the right way to solve problems. We have been working day and night on this problem as we love our customers.
- A:There are some things we know that we did learn here. One thing is how much we love our customers and how we are going to take care of them. We were stunned and upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports stuff, and the reason we didn’t say more is because we didn’t know enough. If we’d have done this event a week and a half ago, we wouldn’t have had half the data we have today.
- Q: What have you learned here?
- Steve adds I used my iPhone in my hone thats made of brick. I've gotten reception where I haven't gotten it before, I'm thrilled. That doesn't mean other people don't have problems, but that's been my experience.
- A: All three show their iPhone without bumper.
- Q: Do any of you carry your iPhone 4 with the bumper?
- A:Not really, we'll reevaluate then. Maybe we'll have a better idea. Maybe Eminem will come out with a band-aid that goes over the corner and everyone will want that.
- Q: This free case program ends on September 30th, is that to let people know that you'll have to buy a case?
- A: I’ve thought about that a LOT. We didn’t fully understand if there were problems at that point. We might have set the expectation that smartphones have weak spots… but the fact is, most smartphones seem to have the same characteristic as the iPhone 4. If you grip them in a certain way they lose signal strength dramatically, especially in a low signal strength area. And one of the things we’ve learned is that as a leader in the smartphone world now, we need to educate. So what we need was data. And now we’ve got some and we’re sharing it now.
- Q: Is there anything you could have said in the launch keynote to lower expectations?
- A: yes.
- Q: Will there be refunds for AT&T contracts?
- A:We strive to do both. He is exampling various good features of iPhone 4.
- Q: Do you think you're making users choose between form and function?
- A:Steve - You know we hear from customers who love this phone and have a great experience with it, and we're doing a lot to help them with any issues they're seeing. To investors, you know, you invest in the company we are, so if the stock goes down $5... I don't think I owe them an apology.
- Q: Are you willing to make an apology to investors?
- A:Are you talking about the Bloomberg article? That's a crock, and we've challenged them to show proof that that. If anyone had said this thing has problems, we would have dispatched people to deal with that issue. Bloomberg article is total bullshit.
- Q: Were you told about the design problem before launch?
- A: When you touch the phone, you put yourself between the signal and your phone, so when you touch that spot you can attenuate the signal, and it you grip it with your whole hand, you can attenuate it even more. We don't build phone with an antenna on top..
- Q: You showed people almost covering the entire phone in their hand, but on the iPhone 4 it can happen with just a touch?
- A: You may not see it in certain areas.
- Q: I can't get my Bold to drop signal right now, maybe you can show me how to do it?
- A: We are getting good reports from most of customers. So I don't know changing the antenna design will help.
- Q: What else you will do to address this problem? Any hardware change?
- First person is asking about Steve's health. He says he is fine.
- Now its Q&A time Tim Cook and Bob Mansfield will join Steve on stage.
- Steve gets back to the starting point smartphones have issues and holding the phone can cause signal problem. there is a challenge for the entire smartphone industry to improve its antenna technology so there are no weak spots. So today we're going to try and take care of our customers.
- Steve says "We do this because we love our users, and if we screw up, we pick ourselves up and we try harder. And when we succeed, they reward us by staying our users. We take this really personally. Maybe we should have a wall of PR people keeping us away from this stuff, but we don't, we take it really personally. So we've worked the last 22 days on this trying to solve the problem. And we think we've gotten to the heart of the problem."
- Also on 30 July 17 more countries will get the iPhone 4.
- Now some other updates. Apple will start shipping White iPhone by end of the month.
- And if you're not happy, you can bring the phone back. We'll give you a full refund within 30 days. No restocking fee. We want to make everyone happy, and if we can't make you happy we'll give you a full refund.
- So Apple is going to address this issue by software update that fixes the bars and other bugs and second Apple will every iPhone owner a free bumper or case. Apple will offer choose of cases and bumper and will ship them free to the iPhone 4 customers.
- At last, Steve says that there is a problem, but the problem is affecting a very small number of users. However, we want all of our users to be happy.
- Personally, I have never used a case with iPhone before and I never had signal loss, but I am experiencing that problem on iPhone 4.
- Steve has a theory for that "When the 3GS came out, we didn't change the design from the 3G. So there were already lots of cases out there for the phone. And more than 80% of new buyers left the store with a case. Now the new phone doesn't fit those cases, and we can't make these bumpers fast enough, so only 20% leave the store with a case... but we're going to figure it out."
- Return rate for iPhone 4 is 1/3 of iPhone 3GS, however iPhone 4 drops more calls per 100 calls than iPhone 3GS according to AT&T data.
- Steve says next some real interesting data from Apple Care only 0.55% out of 3 million have called or visited Apple store with this problem.
- Actually, we know people whose reception has gone done. But Apple is trying to explain.
- Steve again says that phones aren't perfect. but people are reporting better reception with this antenna than they've ever seen before.
- Steve is now talking about how Apple tests their phone. Apple has invested $100 million in 17 anechoic chambers. Steve says "And we had a reporting error -- we screwed up on our algorithm. Some of these other phones may be too generous. Our choice was to put the correct algorithm in. And we did that with the new update. You'll still see a drop... we haven't figured out a way around the laws of physics yet."
- Steve says Phones aren't perfect and everyone's phone has a weak spot. What is Steve trying to say here?
- Steve is showing signal drop on other phones like Bold, Droid Eris and Omnia II.
- For past 22 days since launch we have been working on this issue.And today we want to share what we have learned.
- We have sold over 3 million iPhone 4 in three weeks. And it has the highest customers satisfaction rating. But we started getting reports about antenna issue.
- Steve says "we are going to talk about how we're going to do that". But first some number.
- Steve is on stage. he says phones aren't perfect. he says "But we want to make all of our users happy. If you don't know that about Apple, you don't know Apple. We love making our users happy."
- Or are they suggesting we should buy the iPhone or return it. you can check the song on Youtube.
- Apple is playing iPhone 4 antenna song on the screen. trying to make it funny.
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- We are in, conference about to start. Smooth jazz music playing to calm everyone down.
It a small crowd than usual. The press conference should start in about 10 minutes.
Apple has invited media for a press conference related to recently released iPhone 4. It is believed that Apple will address the iPhone 4 antenna issues as well as provide information about the steps they will take to rectify the signal loss problem. The conference will start at 10 AM PST / 1PM EST today and we will be doing live coverage of the conference. We will post up to the minute coverage of the event as well as analyst of what Apple says at the press conference on live.techztalk.com.
The press conference will start in about an hour till that time you can read other iPhone 4 related articles here.
