On Friday, Apple held a press conference where they defended the iPhone 4's antenna design and presented data suggesting the issue was blown out of proportion. During a portion of their presentation, they demonstrated signal loss in other major phone manufacturers including devices made by RIM And Nokia.
Neither company took too kindly to the demos and both issued responses. RIM issued a statement to Crackberry.com which begins:
Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation.
RIM claims Apple made design decisions they should stand by rather than pointing the finger.
Meanwhile, Nokia responded on a blog with a similar sentiment:
In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. Thats why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.
Finally, this crazy Taiwanese video recreation of the entire "antennagate" incident provides a humorous look (via Gizmodo):
Update: The Wall Street Journal reports that HTC and Samsung, two of Apple's other targets at its press conference, have also responded regarding the situation.
"The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones," HTC chief financial officer Hui-Meng Cheng said. "They (Apple) apparently didn't give operators enough time to test the phone."
Samsung simply noted that it "hasn't received significant customer feedbacks" regarding signal issues with its Omnia II handset featured by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his presentation of iPhone competitors also exhibiting signal attenuation when held.
