Apple Stops Bad Mouthing Competitors Removes Antennagate Videos

Since the release of the new iPhone 4 Apple has come under some serious scrutiny from several major tech sites and consumer magazine including Consumer Reports and TechCrunch over antenna problems leading to reception issues. Apple's original approach was to downplay the issue originally telling consumers they should "Just avoid holding it in that way" or buy a bumper case.

"Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas," said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. "If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."

The company then changed direction and looked at blaming a software design flaw before finally stooping to bad mouthing the competition with videos of the so-called "death grip" at work on other smartphones.

Over the weekend is appears Apple has decided to remove those videos in-lieu of what we can only expect will be another approach at downplaying the iPhone 4 issue and or passing the buck on to other companies as well.

The original video files attacking the Blackberry Bold, HTC Droid Eris, Motorola Droid X and other smartphones are no longer available on Apple's specially-created Smatphone Antenna Performance page. Instead, visitors are now met with a new page showing images of the company's state-of-the-art testing facilities and a brief description describing attenuation and signal loss as well as minor details about their testing program.

The exception appears to be Apple Canada, where the old page still lives and Apple’s official YouTube channel where they are no longer featured, and are a little bit trickier to find.

The removal from the main US site leads us to wonder why the videos have been removed. Its possible that the threat of legal action here in the US by companies whose phones have been demonstrated could be behind the change. Apple however has yest to offer any answers.

The majority of the videos sparked some serious backlash from the tech community as well as Apple's competitors. They argued that their phones did not experience the same level of signal attenuation as the iPhone 4, which can lose signal strength when the bottom left corner of the device is touched.

Most tech pundits agree that in many cases Apple's results could not be as easily replicated as those of users who complained about issues with their iPhones. In fact in several reports the results couldn't be replicated without holding the phone in a totally unnatural manner unlike that of the iPhone.

"We can't seem to recreate this one as easily with our Droid Xs," Engadget reports. German-based Stiftung Wartentest, basically the German version of Consumer Reports, found the iPhone 4's reception will drop by up to 90 percent under the death grip versus a 25 percent signal loss for two other unnamed smartphones.

Clearly the issues Apple highlights are not the same. Apple tried hard to convince us none fanboys that it was but it’s not working. After all, if the other smartphones mentioned like the BlackBerry Bold or Droid X had the same issues as the iPhone 4, it would have been big news by now.

My conclusion:

Apple fanboys are going to be Apple fanboys and clearly as sales of the new iPhone continue to climb we can see that consumers are willing to let Apple slide on the this one. Sure this may not be an issue that affects every iPhone user equally, and hey it might not affect you at all, but in my eyes the issue here is that there is obviously a problem with a major number (even if it's a small percentage) of iPhones and Apple as a major manufacture should be held accountable. A major company like Apple should not be playing the blaming game and trying to point fingers the other way. They've acknowledged the issue by means of the bumper case giveaway and should leave it at that.