3D ANTENNA PRINTING PROMISES BETTER RECEPTION

Researchers at the University of Illinois have come up with a nanoscale printing technique that allows for the creation of so-called 3D antennas. The researchers printing process uses nanoparticle silver ink onto a curved substrate, as shown up above. The resulting components "exhibit performance metrics that are an order of magnitude better than those realized by monopole antenna designs." In fact these creations are said to approach the Chu-Harrington Limit of theoretical performance in an antenna. Plus, they look really cool...too bad they will hidden away inside your mobile device.

APPLE TRYING TO PATENT "LOGO ANTENNA"

Embedding an antenna in the external body of a phone? Maybe not such a good idea. Hiding it behind the logo sounds a little more practical, and that's the idea Apple wrote up in a patent application dated June 17th, 2009, back before we knew antennas and gates could be so wickedly conjoined. That was also before we knew about the iPad, which seems to have one of these so-called "logo antennas" within it, as found when iFixit did their dirty thing. The same can be said for iMacs, which also have antennas peering through an apple-shaped hole to avoid any reception issues caused by an aluminum chassis. It looks to be a good solution, but not exactly a novel one. In roaming around the USPTO archives we found a similar 2003 patent from Dell also called "Logo Antenna," the big difference being that while Apple's logo forms a window for the antenna the logo in Dell's patent actually is the antenna. [Engadget]

APPLE ENDING FREE iPHONE4 CASE PROGRAM

Apple will end it's program of giving a free case for the iPhone 4, when requested, on September 30th.  Any iPhone 4 sold after that date will not be eligible for the free case.  Apple instituted the policy back in June to help deal with the antenna issue some iPhone 4 users were experiencing.

According to Apple "We now know that the iPhone 4 antenna attenuation issue is even smaller than we originally thought. A small percentage of iPhone 4 users need a case, and we want to continue providing them a Bumper case for free. For everyone else, we are discontinuing the free case program on all iPhone 4s sold after September 30, 2010. We are also returning to our normal returns policy for all iPhone 4s sold after September 30. Users experiencing antenna issues should call AppleCare to request a free Bumper case." [Apple]