The biggest scandal in Apple's history

The iPhone 4 antenna error spread in the US, opening the "Antennagate" scandal. Photo: Mashable .

Despite being resolved satisfactorily, Antennagate remains one of the biggest scandals in Apple’s history. After the iPhone 4 was released, users noticed a strange phenomenon: when holding the phone with their left hand, the network signal was very poor, even lost, and calls could not be made.

In 2012, Apple settled a class-action lawsuit over antenna defects on the iPhone 4, eventually offering free cases or $15 in cash compensation to each user.

At the time, Apple admitted that it had made a mistake in the formula responsible for displaying the number of bars of signal strength. In a post on the X account on October 8, software engineer and designer Sam Henri Gold found the exact change that caused the problem.

The lookup table that is believed to be the cause of Apple's Antennagate debacle. Photo: Sam Henri Gold .

Specifically, Gold compared the original iOS 4.0 operating system with the updated version 4.0.1 and began analyzing files in the system kernel. The expert's attention focused on a file called CommCenter, which has the function of calculating signal strength.

Gold explains that the actual calculation is very simple, but the problem lies not in the calculation code, but in the lookup table which consists of 20 bytes.

“When you plot it on a graph, you can see how the values are distorted because they are really smoothed out too much. Most of the time, the user will see a four or five bar signal. But when you hold the device, the drop is so sharp, you see a catastrophic drop from five bars to two bars,” Gold explains.

In iOS 4.0.1, Apple changed these values to be “much smoother.” When mapped onto the graph, it can be seen that it takes a lot of signal drops to go from 5 bars to 0 bars.

While it's less likely to see a five-bar signal, it's also less likely to see a sudden "plummet." Gold concluded that just 20 bytes of this code were the "culprit" causing Antennagate.

Source: https://znews.vn/scandal-lon-nhat-lich-su-apple-post1592123.html