Apple giveth and Apple apparently taketh away.
This past weekend, Apple scrubbed its site of the antenna reception comparison videos that it had posted after the iPhone 4 press conference earlier this month. Instead, the page now features only information on Apple’s own facilities for testing signal reception on the iPhone. The videos have also been removed from Apple’s YouTube channel.
During the July 13 press conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the company would give free cases, which appear to solve the signal problem, to all iPhone 4 owners. However, Jobs also pointed out that all smartphones suffer, to some degree, from the same signal attenuation that has garnered so much discussion on the iPhone 4.
Jobs took the opportunity to demonstrate the effect on a BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris, and Samsung Omnia II. “We could have gone on and on with another five or six phones,” said Jobs during the event.
And so Apple did, posting a page of antenna videos, showing the effect on a number of other popular smartphones. Of course, the companies who saw their phones showcased were less than pleased about their inclusion in the collection: RIM, Nokia, and HTC all fired back at Apple’s allegations, contending that their phones had no reception problems, despite the videos apparently showing otherwise.
Whether those heated comments had any effect on Apple’s removal of the page is unclear, though Apple is not often one to take competitors’ criticisms to heart. More liekly, Apple simply decided its point was better served by focusing on a positive message about its own rigorous testing processes rather than trying to shift the focus to its competitors’ products.