Steve Jobs says 'No Interest' in iPhone 4 radiation app, devs release it anyway
Tawkon, makers of a mobile application that measures cellular radiation, have been blocked from releasing their app for iPhone. In response, the company on Wednesday released the tawkon app for iPhone via the Cydia jailbreak.
Apple's GSM iPhone 4 has been highly criticized for its antenna issues, and the relative ease with which users can completely block its reception with the "death grip." Journalists coyly referred to the resulting fallout from this issue as "antennagate."
While Antennagate was at its peak furor, an Israel-based company called tawkon Ltd. showed off how mobile phones actually emit more radiation when struggling to find wireless signals.
At the time, the company had a mobile app for BlackBerry and Android that measured how much radiation a mobile phone was emitting.
"All the information about the transmission power of the mobile phone is available on the device itself, in the cellular protocol stack that manages the cellular modem (baseband)," tawkon's Scott Piro told me in August. "We use this information in the form of different RF parameters extracted from the device itself. We then take into consideration the proximity of the phone to the user (for example if the phone is held against the user's ear or on the user's lap) to help determine the actual exposure level at any given time."
The company was awaiting approval for their app in the iOS app store, but it was rejected by none other than Steve Jobs himself.
"After encouraging discussions with iPhone executives at Apple Cupertino headquarters, their generous compliments about our application functionality and graphic appeal weren't enough to sway the executive decision to reject tawkon from the app store," said CEO and Co-Founder of tawkon, Gil Friedlander.
Friedlander tried to appeal to Jobs in an email explaining why tawkon is a useful and constructive application, but Jobs' reply was brief, and to the point.
"No Interest."
Because of this, tawkon today has released their iOS app
for Cydia, an iPhone Jailbreak.
"We believe it is every phone user's fundamental right to know the level of radiation they're exposed to, and to take precautionary measures if they see fit. tawkon makes it easy for people to use their iPhone with lower exposure to cellphone radiation," Friedlander said Wednesday.
Beliving fully in the service its application provides, tawkon has set up a public petition to get iPhone users to show their support and try to get tawkon listed legitimately in the iTunes App Store.