Don’t hold your iPhone like that!?!
Miranda Capra / Consumer Products / Human Factors / Industrial Design / MobileI’m sad to say that my new iPhone has the same “death grip” problem as everyone else. If I hold it so that my hand bridges two of the three metal bands that encircle the device, the reception bars drop. It’s especially bad if you bridge a gap in the bands at the bottom-left corner of the device, right where it nestles into your palm if you hold it left-handed. What was Apple thinking, building the antenna into an exposed metal band around the edge of the phone?
There are some problems with consumer products that you don’t discover until people start using them. For example, I bought my iPad in April, but it wasn’t until June when I started wearing shorts that I realized that the metal back is really cold! However, this is a problem that the mobile phone industry has known about for years. It was one of the factors in moving from external to internal antennas; users like to rest a finger on the antenna while making calls, which greatly interferes with reception. It’s because skin is slightly conductive, which is exactly why Apple can use a capacitive touchscreen on the iPhone (instead of a resistive touchscreen, which requires pressure), and why you can’t use your iPhone with gloves on.
Using this external antenna was a carefully deliberated decision by Apple to achieve a particular look and shape. As a consulting company that works in product design, we are very aware that there are tradeoffs to be made between usability and design. In our own design process, we try to carefully balance aesthetics, fun, ease of use, and efficiency. You take into account how the product looks, how people react to it, how they use it, how many people will experience anticipated difficulties, and how severe these difficulties are. Not wanting to put a cold iPad on my lap? Not a big problem. Dropping a call because I’m holding my phone wrong? Huge! Apple is known for pursing elegant designs, which is why the front of the iPhone only has one button and their mice have none, but design should never come at the expense of basic functionality.
According to engadget, Apple’s suggestion is to hold the phone a different way. That’s ridiculous! It goes against one of our mottos in Human Factors and Usability, “fit the task to the person, not the person to the task.” Or you can buy a case. This is why Apple has for the first time released their own iPhone cases, called bumpers, which insulate the band from your hand. I hear they’re selling like hotcakes. But I’ve never put a case on my iPod Touch, it’s too beautiful and thin, and certainly don’t want to cover up my lovely new iPhone. So now I have to choose between a phone with stunningly beautiful industrial design, or a phone hidden inside a case that can actually make calls. Completely ridiculous!
I’m sure that in a few weeks there will be dozens of companies offering their own cases and solutions, and hopefully some of them will be more elegant than the plastic bumpers from Apple. But shame on you, Apple, for giving design a bad name by creating a phone that forces you to choose between aesthetics and functionality! No one should have to make that choice.
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