How Did Antennagate Happen?
Apple announced yesterday that the company would be providing free cases to all iPhone 4 customers, to address the issues raised by the antenna placement on the new phone's design which increased the occurrence of dropped calls when held in a consumer's left hand.
As part of that announcement, Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs defended his company's commitment to its original design and compared the performance of iPhone 4 to other devices, prompting various competitors, like Nokia and RIM, and their fans to respond.
But how did Apple find itself in the position of defending the quality of its industrial design and pre-release testing of the handset's performance? To understand the answer to that question, one might only need to go back to the infamous tale of the stolen iPhone prototype.
When that device was "discovered" in the wild back in March, it was cloaked in a casing meant to give a casual observer the impression it was the readily available iPhone 3GS. 
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple, legendary for its Pentagon level layers of security, knowingly sent its next generation devices into the field for pre-release testing wrapped to disguise them from the general public and prevent premature leaks about the phone or its capabilities.
Now, a few months after that incident, and to address the complaints about reception and call handling when the phone is held in certain positions, Apple is providing cases to solve the problem.
Prior to a new phone coming to market, handset manufacturers in the United States work with carriers to meet industry standards of performance for the radios within mobile phones when connecting to cell towers and managing calls under various conditions, including low signal strength, seen by consumers as "fewer bars."
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati