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He's right. Just don't hold the phone retardedly like in the video. You have fingertips, use them. Hell, i'm a righty, but last night I made a call holding with my left - it felt perfectly natural holding it with my fingertips, not burying it in my hand.

If you have to tell the consumer how to hold your device, you blew it.

iPad: "There's no wrong way to hold it."
iPhone: "You're holding it wrong."

Ridiculous.
 
There is absolutely NO problem here. Try it for yourself and you will see.

Wow, lifelong Cult of Mac member, eh? That programming is going to be tough to break but, with willpower, you'll be ok, I promise.

I have an iPhone 4, received yesterday by FedEx (yesterday meaning the 23rd since it's pretty much midnight Pacific time on the 25th as I'm about to post this) and I have duplicated the results of the fingertip test on my own phone a dozen times or more today. I don't have a video camera (aside from the one in the damned iPhone) so I can't post a video.

I live in downtown Las Vegas, I'm in an apartment building on the 3rd floor, and I have a balcony about 25 feet from my front door that lets me look onto the downtown Vegas area - I'm 2 streets east of Las Vegas Blvd and 1 street south of Fremont meaning I'm about 300 yards from the geographic center of the entire city/metropolitan area which is the intersection of Las Vegas Blvd and Fremont (where the famous cowboy on horseback sign is located).

The significance of this? I have a Sprint central office (aka "switch") 250 yards from me when I'm standing on that balcony just outside my apartment doorway that's got a cell site on top of it, and an AT&T central office that sits right beside it and a cell site on the roof of that building as well.

Inside my apartment, with the iPhone 4 laying flat on the desktop, I get 5 bars as expected (AT&T service, for the moment). If, as demonstrated in many videos posted all over the place, I place a single fingertip on the lower left side of the phone, directly on the seam (what other people call "the black line" etc) and my skin bridges the contact with the two metal bands that make up part of the chassis and act as the antenna(s), within 30 seconds the apparent signal strength drops to no bars and then about 5 seconds later I will lose service completely and totally.

As long as I myself hold my fingertip in that spot bridging those components that phone will not regain service, and I held it there for 2 minutes in one test. As soon as I release the fingertip contact, within 45 seconds service is restored to the full 5 bars.

I disabled Wi-Fi for one test, ensured I had 3G 5 bar strength, opened Pandora and started streaming audio and then set the phone down in the same location on the desktop (ok, so I might have been a millimeter or two off, sue me) and waited 1 full minute to allow the stream to get going, buffered, and playing.

I then applied that single fingertip to the lower left side once again, and I lost service totally and the stream within 45 seconds of applying my skin to the iPhone 4.

Buddy, I don't know what proof you require, nor do I really care, all I know is that this phone isn't supposed to do this, and telling me "Just avoid holding it that way" or any way I choose to hold such a device is an insult to my intelligence.

I stepped out on the balcony 10 minutes ago and got 5 bars as expected since when I'm standing on that balcony you could literally take a laser pointer (if the phone had one built in) and hit the cell site tower/antenna assembly - it literally is line-of-sight from my balcony and it's only about 20 feet higher in elevation than my 3rd floor balcony is.

Held the phone in the air by using my right hand and my index and middle finger on the back glass panel and and my right thumb on the front, just to the right of the Home button - I was not touching the metal frame at all with my right hand, there was no skin-on-metal contact nor was I touching the display on the capacitive section.

I then placed the index fingertip of my left hand on the seam, once again bridging the gap between the two metal antenna components, and was fairly shocked to see the signal degrade, fade, disappear, and then lose service yet again.

And that's line-of-sight with a cell tower ~250 yard away, roughly 750 feet, maybe a tiny bit more (I mapped it out with Google Maps and GPS once from my balcony to the top of that AT&T building).

This thing is broken, and will be returned in a few days because of said defect. If it's actually a coating issue as I've suspected and others are now starting to consider, that's fine, but it's still going back. I don't care if they offer me the damned phone for free when I take it back, I'm done with Apple and their blatant false advertising, deceptive implications about performance and outright shrugging off their own design flaws and blaming them on other people - right now they're blaming US and telling us we don't know how to hold the phone.

How stupid can someone be to buy into this? Steve Jobs, by saying "Just avoid holding it that way" is saying "Listen, I'm Steve Jobs, I know more about this because it's my phone and I have complete tyrannical control over ever facet of it from start to finish, so obviously the fault lies with you and your non-perfect non-Apple labeled hands so, deal with it."

I'm done testing the iPhone 4, I have my proof, in the palm of my hand no less, and now it's time to point it out to others that will continue to give Apple a pass on such things.

EDIT:
Someone wanted more "proof" by having someone stand under a cell tower and do the same type of test, which I did and documented here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/10360373/
 
You posted 10 articles that all say the same thing - "People claim that touching their iPhone 4 causes signal degradation". I don't need the Times or the Journal to tell me what I read on MacRumors over a day ago.

Why don't you take my challenge of a scientific test for signal strength? Or would you rather chase windmills all day?

This type of evidence will not be shown until expert testimony is given during the class action lawsuits that are sure to come.

edit: Heaven help Apple if something bad happens and these phones can't even dial 911. I can't imagine a jury would accept Steve's "non-issue" or "you're holding it wrong" when a terrified parent shorts the antenna while trying to call for help because their child is grievously hurt.
 
Hang On - iPhone Cliffhanger

Stellaaaaa
 

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I agree with SJ. This "problem" exist since phones have internal antennas.
No, the "problem" is that Apple decided to put the antenna on the exterior of the phone, where the live conductive material of the antenna is easily accessible to conductive human skin. The phone may look good, and it wowed people when they announced this "innovative new way too do antennas", but it's a stupid idea. They could have easily still put the antenna around the edge, but with something non-conductive covering it also, and there would never have been an issue.
 
Blame AT&T.
'Never heard of such issue here in Europe since my first cellular back in the 90s. The network works great, wherever you are (well, maybe not in the Alps, but hey, we're talking cities here), however you hold your phone.
 
No, the "problem" is that Apple decided to put the antenna on the exterior of the phone, where the live conductive material of the antenna is easily accessible to conductive human skin. The phone may look good, and it wowed people when they announced this "innovative new way too do antennas", but it's a stupid idea. They could have easily still put the antenna around the edge, but with something non-conductive covering it also, and there would never have been an issue.

OK.
 
Blame AT&T.
'Never heard of such issue here in Europe since my first cellular back in the 90s. The network works great, wherever you are (well, maybe not in the Alps, but hey, we're talking cities here), however you hold your phone.

Read the thread. Several people who are in countries outside of the US have reported the same issue. In fact, on Engadget's post about this issue, they demoed it on a British iPhone on the O2-UK network. This is not AT&T's problem.
 
There are far too many YouTube videos and anecdotal reports for everyone to be faking. Honestly, you need to stop clutching at straws.

Exactly.

Ag2twins says: Thu Jun 24 01:00:24 PDT 2010I think you posted this to soon to be believable. You should have waited for the phone to be released to the public first. Nice try, oh and your source is that scum Gizmodo. They have motives to make Apple look bad after they stole the prototype from an Apple engineer. You so called "reporters" are sick.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/1997...yellow_discoloration_on_iphone_4_screens.html

So Ag2twins thinks there's no problems. I think this delisional fanboy would say the same thing about the reception issue... that is until Stevie makes a statement, then he slithers into his rathole and stays quiet about the fact he was majorly wrong. Yes, even Apple products can have design flaws.

To a fanboy, a problem w/ an Apple product = a fakery from a jealous non-Apple user and a gobal conspiracy to bring the company down.

To a fanboy, a YouTube video showing a problem w/ an Apple product = same

Yet they're the same people who use YT videos to show how crappy a Droid phone is. Lovely!
 
This reply sounds like something the Russian president told him to say when they were hanging out yesterday. Jobs is turning into a true communist if that's what he thinks.

Somebody is listening to too much AM talk radio. :eek:
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I'm right handed. When I am talking, I'm not touching that seam. But when I do anything else, I'm holding the phone in my left hand and touching the display with my right index finger. That seam is buried in my left palm.

If we are supposed to use a case - if it is required to get a good signal, then Apple should give us a Bumper for free. Period.
 
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