Apple's Response To The Death Grip - Bars Displayed Wrong

Apple earlier today finally acknowledged the iPhone 4 antenna issues also known as the "Death Grip." They said that it is in fact just an optical illusion - a bug in how the software displays signal-strength bars on the screen. In a "Letter From Apple" posted on their website this morning, the manufacturer claims that the iPhone 4 "mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should" and that people who see drops of four or more bars must be in a weak signal area. Apple did mention a software fix that will be coming in "a few weeks," and that it will only incorporate a formula recommended by AT&T for calculating bars while "the real signal strength remains the same."

After a week of Apple steadily denying the existence of the iPhone 4 antenna issue, today's "Letter" is the first admission from the company that "iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower lef corner of the metal band." The company says they were shocked to find out that the formula users to calculate bars is totally wrong and that it causes the iPhone 4 to display more bars when it should really be displaying less bars and it concludes that people who were complaining about this issue were most likely in an area that had weak signal strength but they didn't know that because the high bars they were seeing were never real in the first place.

This response is actually really disappointing because the so-called "formula" is no more than a mapping of signal strength readings to bars. Anandtech noticed in their testing earlier this week that the fifth bar has a really broad range from -91 dBm up to -51 dBm, so that you can lose as much as 40 dBm and still show five bars. That may have something to do with the formula they are talking about but Apple didn't mention anything about users who have noticed loss of sound quality and dropped calls due to the "Death Grip" or even Anandtech's testing showing an average 20 dBm drop in signal. Maybe Apple is hoping that the complaints will go away when people see more bars on their screen or maybe there is another software review that they aren't discussing publicly. It doesn't seem that it should take "a few weeks" to implement and test a change to just one formula. We'll have to just wait for the update or news to be revealed.

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If you want to read the full letter, you can do so by checking out the link mentioned earlier in the post or read below:

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Apple