File:History of Antennagate

HISTORY OF THE LEAKED IPHONE 4 PROTOTYPE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KihemSZkNs

ANTENNAGATE PRESS BRIEFING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IorfYuF4gMM _______________________________ If you aren’t familiar with the antennagate debacle, let me give you a quick overview of what happened back in 2010 that caused quite a bit of backlash in the tech community. The iPhone 4 had just been released and was seeing record sales numbers, but there was one problem, and it had to do with its antenna system. Gizmodo claimed that when the iPhone 4 was gripped a certain way, its signal bars would drop and effect the phone’s reception. This became known as the ‘death grip.’ And after this behavior was replicated by a few other tech news outlets, news of the phenomenon began to spread like wildfire. Even being covered by the national media online and on television. Some people even went so far as to say Apple should issue a mass recall of the iPhone 4. But other journalists just wanted answers as to why the iPhone was experiencing what appeared to be a fatal hardware flaw. Because how can a user rely on their phone to make calls if there’s a risk of reception dropping at any time? This eventually led to Apple holding a press briefing where Steve Jobs acknowledged the issue, but didn’t handle things the way most people expected.

Now that you have an idea of what we’ll be covering, let’s get into the details of this story beginning with the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010.