RF experts defend Apple's death-grip allegations

John C. Tanner | July 22, 2010

telecomasia.net

Apple’s iPhone 4 isn’t the only smartphone prone to antenna interference issues, but that doesn’t absolve the company of its own design flaws, said an RF expert Wednesday.

Apple chief Steve Jobs has been lambasted by critics for a press conference last Friday addressing “Antennagate,” in which the iPhone 4’s RF signal drops out when held a certain way.

Jobs claimed that smartphones with similar form factors and internal antennas, such as BlackBerry, HTC Droid Eris, Samsung Omnia and Windows mobile phones, “behave exactly the same way”.

Executives from RIM and Nokia blasted Jobs’ comments, but Charles Riggle, VP of marketing and business development for device antenna maker SkyCross, says Jobs is technically right.

“It’s true that antennas in smartphones and other handheld wireless devices are affected by the way in which the user holds the device,” Riggle said in a statement.

However, Riggle also said that the iPhone 4’s antenna problem was the result of insufficient user testing and lack of RF expertise, and that the iPhone 4’s designers could have done more to mitigate the problem.

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