Top five iPhone 4 misconceptions: antenna, Verizon, glass, more

iPhone 4 has been a runaway hit, but that hasn’t stopped a massive amount of misinformation about the device (mostly of the negative variety) from circulating, leaving some potential buyers in the dark as to what the iPhone 4 experience actually has in store for them. So in the name of helping to clear up some of the confusion, here are the top iPhone 4 misconceptions addressed in no particular order:

1. Glass: Most people hear the word “glass” and freak out, as nearly everyone has had some bad experience with breaking glass at some point in their life. So the new iPhone’s all-glass body has some people concerned about durability. But as it turns out, the glass screen has been the most durable component of the first three iPhone generations. The original nearly all-metal iPhone was scratched and dented way too easily; the acrylic backing of the 3G and 3Gs models did better with the denting but was still easily scratchable. In fact most beat up old iPhones share the same thing in common: the glass screen is the only part of the iPhone that hasn’t gotten beaten up. Suffice it to say that the “glass” used for the iPhone’s body has little in common with the drinking glasses in your kitchen when it comes to the ability to withstand wear and tear, and even drops. No one will know the long term durability of the iPhone 4 until it’s been around for awhile, but based on what we learned during the first three years of the iPhone era, the new all-glass body looks like a major step in the right direction for durability, not the wrong direction.

2. FaceTime: Here’s one that’s being misunderstood in a falsely positive direction. FaceTime, Apple’s easy-as-pie two way video calling system, works as awesomely as advertised. It’s the Jetsons, Star Trek, and the Matrix all rolled into one. But there’s a catch to FaceTime which will, at least for some users, make it feel more like a Matrix sequel than the real thing: it only works on wifi. In other words, you can’t just whip out your iPhone 4 and make a video call to another iPhone 4 user; both of you have to be in range of wifi. In most cases that means being in your own home, which would lead to the question of why you’d be making a video phone call to someone in the next room of your house. More likely you’d want to use this while one person is at home and a loved out and about, but that means that the second person will have to hunt down a wifi signal, which typically means finding a Starbucks (are you going to make a video phone call in that crowd?), being in your hotel room (which could be ideal but video transmissions are data intensive and most hotels offer terribly slow wifi), or one of the other relatively few places you’ll encounter wifi in your travels. Eventually this will change once cellular networks become faster and AT&T starts allowing FaceTime calls to be made over its cellular network, removing the wifi requirement from the picture. But in 2010, FaceTime is very much a niche that can only be used in a very small number of specific circumstances. Despite the way in which Apple is marketing it, FaceTime might currently be more practical in a corporate setting where users have office wifi more readily available.

3. But it comes with a contract: It’s true, buying an iPhone 4 will extend your current contract with AT&T. But rather than tacking two additional years onto the end of the contract as many users mistakenly believe, it simply means that your contract will be amended to last two years from the day you buy the iPhone 4. For instance, if you bought an iPhone 3GS nine months ago, you still have fifteen months remaining on your original two-year contract. Upgrade to an iPhone 4 and you’d go back to having twenty-four months remaining on your contract, which means that you’d merely be extending it by an extra nine months. Also, the concept of being “contract-free” is widely misunderstood. Being without a contract doesn’t save you any money (your monthly bill will still be the same), and the next time you buy any phone from any U.S. carrier, you’ll go right back to being under contract again anyway. Yes, it’s ridiculous. But it won’t change until we change the laws in this country. You want to use a cellphone in the U.S. and have it be anything other than some disposable crap-phone, you’re going to be under contract. If you don’t like it, call your congressman (and frankly, you should probably do just that). But in the mean time, the only advantage to reaching the end of your AT&T contract would be so that you could switch to another carrier. Which leads to another misconception…

4. Verizon iPhone: Once you get past all the rumors, theories, innuendo, and misconceptions, the only thing you can say for certain about the “Verizon iPhone” is that anyone claiming to have any definitive information about the situation is full of crap. There is no way that any store-level or support-level employee of Apple, AT&T, Verizon, or any other company would ever have any first hand knowledge on the subject. Whatever you’ve been told about the prospects for a Verizon iPhone, forget about it. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen a year from now. Or five years. Or maybe never. But here’s what probably is true: the rise of the iPhone has caused major strain on AT&T’s network due to the fact that there are now tens of millions of iPhone users out there doing email, internet, and other network-based stuff in a much higher per-user volume than any other cellphone (even other smartphones). There’s every reason to expect that Verizon’s network, which isn’t any more technically advanced than AT&T’s, would suffer the same fate if the iPhone came to Verizon: millions of iPhone users would expose the Verizon network for being just as underpowered as any other U.S. cellular network. And those AT&T iPhone users who had been planning to eventually switch over a Verizon iPhone will find that the grass has become just as brown on the other side. In other words, you can’t win. Over in Europe, and in fact most other civilized parts of the world, their cellular networks don’t suck like ours do. But then again, they have laws about such things and we don’t. That goes back to calling your congressman. But in the mean time, just don’t expect a Verizon iPhone experience to be any better than the current AT&T iPhone experience. In fact, once the Verizon iPhone floodgates are open, it’s possible that it could be even worse. No way to know for sure. Just don’t get your hopes up.

5. But I heard something about the iPhone 4 antenna… What you’ve heard is a bunch of flat-out bullshit concocted by geek tech journalists with too much time on their hands and an anti-Apple axe to grind. Imagine if an iPhone newbie told you that their iPhone is “defective” because when they put their finger over the bottom microphone, the people they’re talking to on the phone can’t hear them; you’d just laugh at the person and never take anything seriously that that person ever said about technology again. That’s how ridiculous this whole iPhone antenna controversy is: if you try really hard, you might be able to figure out how to hold your iPhone 4 in such a manner that you can slightly reduce the signal strength, if you just happen to be in a location in which the signal strength is at a certain level to begin with. In other words it’s a non-issue. But it’s been so overblown by those in a position to overblow it, that the most common reaction we get here at Beatweek is along the lines of “I bought an iPhone 4 and I can’t figure out how to make the antenna problem to happen, so I think there must be something wrong with my unit.” That’s right, these geek clowns posing as journalists have created such a level of phony controversy that users now think there must be something wrong with their iPhone 4 because they can’t find anything wrong with it.

The way in which various technology journalists have twisted this issue to suit their own agenda is embarrassing, and I’ve recently had to cross a few names off the list of fellow technology journalists whose opinions I thought I respected, based on the harmful nonsense they’ve been propagating about this very issue (including Consumer Reports, who just signaled the end of its own relevance this week). Bottom line: the iPhone 4 has its pros and cons, but there is no “antenna controversy” and you’d do well to stop paying attention to any self-proclaimed expert who claims that there is. Make your iPhone 4 decision based on the facts of the matter, not based on the fact that some geek headline writer would rather see you using a geekier phone like the Droid and is perfectly willing to lie to you about the iPhone 4 in an attempt to carry out their agenda.

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.