Between the speaker and the 3.5 inch screen, I believe there is some sort of logical fallacy in Dustin Curtis' reasoning: the existing design is X, then we figure out some justification for X.
I hadn't really noticed these things until I used Android phones. Since switching, I've become aware of how much thoughtful design went into the boring things I used to take for granted on the iPhone.
I've had the same realization about the iPad after working with webOS on the HP touchpad. I think the reason so much gets taken for granted with the iPad and iPhone is that their design and interface are very intuitive, so that you never have to really spend a lot of energy learning how to do things on them -- what comes naturally usually works. When you use a device that does things differently, you have to stop for a minute and take notice, and actually learn how to do it the way they've designed it (not that that makes it inherently worse).
I think what he was saying is that different != worse.
If you had started on an android phone, you would probably have written a similar piece talking about how apple phones get muted when placed on a fluffy blanket (as the edge gets covered), and how the android hardware designers did it right.
You should focus on talking about design tradeoffs irrespective of your current behavior. Reading about how you can't train yourself to place your phone face down, and that this is somehow a samsung design flaw, isn't interesting :-/
I don't understand. Can you explain why you think having the speaker on the back of the phone is better than it being on the bottom?
A 2nd grader's understanding of physics informs us that yes, indeed, there will be some situation in which the iPhone's speaker is obstructed and another speaker isn't (why, you could stand the phone up!). But what obstruction is going to be more common?
If frequency of obstruction isn't the only issue, what's the compensating virtue of having the speaker on the back of the phone? How valuable is that compensation?
I am not an electrical engineer, but to answer your question it is my understanding that the diameter of a speaker is very important for sound quality, volume, and cost. This is the reason that home audio speakers aren't the size of thimbles.
I did a quick search to see if any of those issues have been talked about wrt iphones, and the top hit was http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=761725 ("when i listen at max volume [my iphone] is really bad. my nokia N82 compared is like a audiophile system") -- which I imagine is caused by the N82 having a larger speaker positioned on the back.
Puts the iphone 4 over 3g as ~3x quieter than a nexus s over 3g. (2g is closer, but no one I know uses their iphone 4 over 2g).
From the review: "For a long while, people have complained that the iPhone [3g & 3gs]'s speakerphone volume was too quiet... I'd say the iPhone 4's speakerphone is still loud enough, though calls over 3G are still a bit too quiet. Until Apple increases the gain on 3G calls, iPhone 4 customers who are hard of hearing should invest in a bluetooth headset."
> If you had started on an android phone, you would probably have written a similar piece talking about how apple phones get muted when placed on a fluffy blanket (as the edge gets covered), and how the android hardware designers did it right.
Probably not since the rear speaker on the Android phone would be completely muted by the same fluffy blanket.
If I have to train myself to lay my phone face down, it's a design flaw. It's a design flaw because it increases the chance of damaging the screen, but more importantly because it requires the user to adapt to something that could have been done correctly in the first place.
If the user has to work around a problem with the design, that's a flaw.
> If I have to train myself to lay my phone face down, it's a design flaw. It's a design flaw because it increases the chance of damaging the screen
Screen damage rates for iPhone 4 are far higher than Nexus S. I take it from your message that you believe this is due to a design flaw. Interesting... I suppose I agree.
> requires the user to adapt to something that could have been done correctly in the first place ... that's a flaw.
No, it couldn't have been done correctly in the first place. The iphone 4 sacrifices 66% of its speaker volume relative to the nexus s to get side placement. That's also a flaw. Design is about tradeoffs.
Thanks for pointing this out. I hate when people comment about how great a design is because it fits their use case. There is no "average user" for a smart phone, so any design decision is going to appear brilliant to some and idiotic to others.
I think it's arguable whether this is a true problem that has never been dealt with until Apple tackled it. The author of that article seems to be the only person I've encountered that has had this alarm being muffled issue.
Various devices deal with this in various ways (by putting little ugly feet on the back as someone noticed, by slightly curving the surface on which the speaker is located, or as iPhone does it by placing it on a plane which in most scenarios sits perpendicular to the surface on which the device is resting).
Whether Apple's solution is the most elegant is also arguable but everyone is entitled to an opinion. One thing is for sure, this wasn't some obscure problem that no engineer has ever thought of until Apple decided to save us.
A lot of tech reviewers seem to do that in their reviews, I've noticed. Since they like the iPhone and they are used to it, they treat it as a reference point, and then anything else that deviates from that must be the wrong way to do it.
It is useful to use the worlds most popular smart phone to compare other phones against. More people reading those articles will be familiar with the iPhone then any other smart phone.
Yeah, you could probably conjure up a problem with any positioning, e.g bottom-speaker is pretty easy to accidentally cover when holding the phone sideways.