When Apple diverts the Antenna Issue on Blackberry, Androids & Windows Mobiles, the rivals obviously won’t keep quiet. Nokia and RIM had immediately hit out on Apple’s so called education of Antenna Attenuation which showed a Blackberry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris and Samsung Omnia II suffer signal loss when hold at particular spots.
From Nokia‘s end, they emphasise on antenna design strategy over physical design in order to optimise its performance. This seems to be a sarcastic remark as Apple is known for its obsession for aesthetics. While admitting that gripping any device may obviously cause performance degration, Nokia has done enough research on the way people hold their phones and how to overcome them by placing antennas elsewhere.
RIM, the blackberry guys too had a shot at Apple saying that what they have done is unacceptable. Apple had simply dragged RIM to clear up their own mess. Similar to Nokia, RIM has stressed that they avoided designs like the iPhone 4 to ensure efficient and effective radio performance on blackberries over the years.
To sum it all up, the other manufacters are telling Apple “Don’t drag our names in just because you can’t design your antenna properly”. When we saw the sensitive antenna areas highlighted by Apple for its rival phones, we don’t find them a problem as you would hardly touch them during normal use.
With the current slim smartphones dimension, majority of users will be holding them by the sides which obviously a bad area to place an antenna. If Apple truly love their users, they should probably know this by now. Apple is simply desperate and they had to resort to poking its rivals to save its own reputation. Their announcement of giving away free cases is indirectly admitting that the iPhone 4 is flawed and needs additional bumpers/case to overcome its problem. Now they are getting the brunt for starting the mud fight.
