Coverage of Apple’s iPhone 4 Press Conference

BY Jason

Published 16 Jul 2010

Likely iPhone 4 signal reception fix

Apple's special iPhone 4 press conference should be underway shortly.

It is being held at Apple's Cupertino headquarters at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, less than one hour from now.

Apple is expected to talk about iPhone 4’s reception problem at the press conference.

Updates will be posted from top to bottom (bottom newest) so stay tuned. Please refresh for latest updates.

Analysts are already making their predictions on what to expect from Apple at the press conference. Let us know what you think Apple will tell us about iPhone 4's reception problem.

We now have a song for the iPhone 4 antenna issue (quite funny):

 

The conference should be starting soon. 

It has started and Apple is playing the iPhone 4 antenna song, what a coincidence 🙂

Steve Jobs on stage talks about the iPhone 4 antenna song on YouTube.

Steve Jobs: “We’re not perfect. Phones aren’t perfect. We know that, you know that. But we want to make all our users happy. If you don’t know that, you don’t know Apple. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do that.”

Steve Jobs says Apple is going to talks about the problems and the data they've got. He goes on to say iPhone 4 is the best product Apple has ever made.

Steve Jobs says how the iPhone antenna problem has turned into an Antennagate.

Steve Jobs is now showing a video of BlackBerry Bold 9700 dropping signal from 4 to 5 bars to just one bar.

Then shows the HTC Droid Eris signal bar dropping from 4 to 1 bar.

Next shows Samsung Omnia 2 and shows the signal bar drop on it as well.

Steve Jobs says how its a challenge for the whole mobile industry.

And admits that they're not perfect, which was made visible by some websites.

He is now talking about their extremely sophisticated antenna labs. Apple has spent $100 million in their antenna testing facilities over the last 5 years.

He admits that if you grip iPhone 4 in a certain way the signal bars drop.

He claims that they have received complaints from only 0.55% of iPhone 4 customers about the antenna issue.

Steve Jobs says the return rates for iPhone 4 are only 1.4% as compared to iPhone 3GS's return rate of 6%, which is considered the gold standard.

Steve Jobs says that the early drop calls on iPhone 4 are more than the iPhone 3GS, even though they think iPhone 4's antenna is superior. But that number is very small. iPhone 4 drops less than one call per hundred than the iPhone 3GS.

Steve Jobs speculates that the reason for that could be because of the healthy market for cases that fit iPhone 3GS when it was launched as opposed to iPhone 4. 

I've a hunch, Apple is going to give away iPhone 4 bumpers for free.

Steve Jobs says he has received over 5000 emails from users telling him that their iPhone is fine and they can't figure out what this is about.

There you go, Steve Jobs has just announced that it is giving away a free bumper. If you've bought one then you'll get a refund and they will keep this going until September 30th.

Apple will send a free case but since it can't make enough bumpers it is going to give you a choice of some other cases that you can pick and they'll send it to you.

Steve Jobs says that if users are still not happy then they can return iPhone 4 for a full refund.

Apple is also aware of the proximity sensor problem and it will be fixed in the next update.

White iPhone will start shipping from the end of July. And iPhone 4 will be available in 17 more countries on July 30th.

Steve Jobs is now talking about how they love their users. 

Steve Jobs: “So we do all this because we love our users. And when we fall short — which we do sometimes — we try harder. We pick ourselves up, we figure out what’s wrong, and we try harder. And when we succeed, they reward us by staying our users, and that makes it all worth it.”

Steve Jobs believes that they have got to the heart of the problem and that is the smarphones have weak spots, which is a challenge to the entire industry.

That's it folks, its Q&A session with Steve Jobs, Tim Cock and Bob Mansfield. What do you think about Steve Jobs explanation of the problem. Are you happy that they're giving a free case and a full refund if you're not happy?