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Apple on iPhone 4 Reception: Signal Strength Display Issue Only, Software Update Coming

phpmaven said:
It's obviously because the phone was erroneously indicating that you had more signal that you really had. Then when people held the phone in such a way as to cause the signal to drop a little, they were actually dropping the signal down to where it was almost gone even though the bars were still high. Continuing to hold it that way would cause the bars to drop down to where they actually should have been all along.

It makes perfect sense to me and was along the lines of what I figured the problem was going to turn out to be. Sitting at my desk at home, I always had very marginal signal with my other phones. With the iPhone 4, I would often look down and see 4 or 5 bars and thought "wow, this new phone gets much better reception here". The reality is, it was just as weak as before but was being displayed erroneously. Then when I would hold the phone in the bottom left corner, I would see the bars drop down to show the signal accurately.

It also explains perfectly why when you are in a strong signal area, the bars won't drop at all when held at the left corner.
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^this.
 
Pretty typical.

Apple releases the

"These are not the droids you are looking for" statement, and immediately the usual fanatics are in here repeating it.
 
I'm still a little confused, so forgive me for my lack of reason- or Apples' (which ever apply's here)

I do not have a handset that exhibits the dropping bar (grip) issue with my phone, and never have. I DO however have data connection drops with 3G reporting at all times and 5 bars.

To be specific (as sited in another data thread on MR) at minimal times this past week, my data screams up and down: but, for the most part, the wheel just spins, and does not connect to mail/safari/speed test/nada. The latency with the network is way high most of the time, and fast when it's working.

Can anyone weigh in on why :apple: or AT&T (along with other networks in Europe) are ignoring this, and pointing the finger at each other. It seems to me, and I can replicate it at any time, that a 3GS stays connected to data, while at the same time the iP4 is dead on data.

I am just lost on this, and will be returning mine if I can't get an answer. I cannot be out of a WIFI connection for business and not have access to data (that I am paying for). If a fix is coming for that, great i'll wait because I love the device, however I need to know what is going on with this 3G data connection, and I need to know soon.
 
tripjammer said:
Dude if you have an Iphone 4 and you are having issues then by all means take it back! There is a 30 day return policy! Most of the iphone 4 users have no issues. If yours is broke then take it back! It is so easy. I know of 10 Iphone 4 users and they have no drop calls or any issues to speak of. ATT is good where they are too. We are all getting 3G 4.0+ meg download speeds and 1.2 meg upload speeds using the SpeedTest App.

http://www.speedtest.net/iphone/42955971.png

Just face it, the Iphone 4 is the best phone right now. 2 Million sales in 1 week prove it. Sure there are bad apples out there but that is why you take them back.

Peace
Click to expand...

2 million sales prove there are 2 million blind Apple sheep out there. Give it 6 months, and if the iPhone isn't fixed PROPERLY then sales WILL be hit.
 
I will give Apple credit for one thing - this ridiculously transparent and insulting press release will make it easier for a lot of people to return their phones.
 
biggest load of crap!

So if this is just a display issue, why the calls get dropped?
It is not about the display, it's about the iPhone 4 dropping those calls.

:eek: - What a load of crap it is! - :eek:
 
NewGenAdam said:
my take


1) it claims to be solely a software issue
2) they're making the bars taller...

So the problem is twofold:
1) the iPhone displays more bars than it has
2) the antenna causes some signal degradation: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
of up to ~24dB

So, if you are on the actual threshold where a decrease of 24dB would lead to very poor signal, the iPhone will initially display deceptively high reception before apparently plummeting further than is actually true.

Yes it is a software issue, yes the iPhone does suffer degradation when held, and more than other phones, but not so much for it to be considered defective.

It's easy to speculate that the reason the bars were anomalously high before is that Apple were trying to trick people into believing their signal to be higher than it actually was, thus making the phone seem better than others.

Ars wrote an article about the bar to reception correlation two years ago:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2008/09/cell-bars-reception.ars
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its a 24db drop, a signal degradation of 99.6% of what you got.
 
Bad marketing

This seems like very bad marketing because most reactions on this forum are totally negative. I have no problems but I am convinced that there are batches out there that are dropping calls where the 3GSs didn't. Seems totally clear and no point denying. They are not addressing the issue directly and coming clean. This is called crisis management and surprisingly Apple seem to be doing a poor job of it.
 
mjteggy05 said:
This.

The biggest problem here is that AT&T's service has sucked, but Apple basically hid that (rightly or wrongly), so many people were happily making calls with '1 bar' of service when the phone was displaying 4 or 5.

This fix makes perfect sense to me. It's not so much a 'fix' though b/c it is a fact that when you hold the phone a certain way it gets less signal, but at least it's not quite so misleading.
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Ok and how do you explain drop calls? While previously people did not experienced so many with their other iPhone or phone?
 
The Apple Store here in Liverpool, UK has iPhone 4's on display using all the major networks, o2, Voda, Orange, 3 etc and no matter how I have tried to invoke a loss of signal none of the phones drop any bars.

We have a rock solid 3G signal here in the city centre.

Maybe RHatton has a point?
 
This is BS....its not a signal reporting issue. When your on 3g, if its a low area....it will load slower. Well my web loads fast where I live so it can't be that low of a signal area and the moment I place my hand on the phone it won't load crap.....NOT A REPORTING ISSUE(although the bars may not be displayed correctly).
 
Warbrain said:
I'm typing this in a strong signal area and tried to make it drop bars - it didn't. But it will happen at home where I don't have the best 3G signal.

This fix makes sense to me. We're seeing a bad representation of signal - a lie if you'd like to call it that - and it should stop with the update.
Click to expand...

AT&T must have sent gremlins to rip up 2 cell towers near my home and office the night before I received my iphone 4. My old iphone had perfect signal in both places....the iphone 4 shows signal loss and drops calls. I assume the old iphone and all the people that had perfect signal with their Blackberry were all displaying incorrectly?

Bull****
 
krUnIzZlE said:
LoL, i call ********. no matter how tightly i grip my Nokia 5800 XpresMusic. NO bars drop :|


Apple = FAIL
Click to expand...

Using the phone without a case will cause scratches. I googled the Nokia 5800 phone and it looks like a babies phone. It is made to grip tightly while going down a slide in the playground.
 
Bodhi395 said:
People keep saying this, but I think people absolutely love their iPhone 4, except for this issue. So it sucks that they have to return a phone they love in all other respects simply for one issue. They therefore want to keep the phone but have Apple resolve the issue somehow, which seems unlikely since its probably a hardware issue that would entail an entire case redesign. So that makes them angry that the only solution is returning this beautiful phone that they can't get enough of.

So saying, "just return it," is not a good answer and just makes people more upset, since they don't want to return it, they love the phone!
Click to expand...

It's perfectly legitimate. Either return it or accept it. People need to stop bitching. Mine has the issue and I've come to the logical conclusion you accept it or return it. I've accepted it and love my phone.
 
I'm not even about to read this thread as much as I do most others, was out grocery shopping when this "announcement" became public.

If you have half a brain in your head, you can immediately see it's a complete lie, and such a 'software update' would not take several weeks to implement.

The fact that this isn't a statement from Steve Jobs himself proves it, in my opinion.

The phones are defective, to a significant degree of numbers, and while not necessarily every single one of them is as drastically affected as others (like mine, for example), the fact that they put this "press release" out indicates they know they're in deep doodoo over this.

And it's about to get much worse.
 
So Apple posts some jobs that they need and after that try to "fix" hardware issue with software? You trolls and haters amaze me everyday.
 
ip4 works great

This has been a google, htc, adobe, etc all other companies collective effort to bash iphone4 as they are aware of the future market potential loss based on the ip4 demand so far.
just get 500(even more) guys with few multiple user accounts on blogs, bum, there you go, you have hundreds of posts on blogs, which is enough to take over common blog opinions.
i can NOT create this signal loss issue as i tried every possible way to do so. IP4 is works perfectly. if you dont like the phone take it back.
 
This is complete crap from Apple. Guess what Apple, I am on a MICROCELL. You know, that device I purchased to improve my signal at home? You know what else? It gives me 5 FULL BARS!

Now here's the kicker that tells me you're lying out of your ass! When I hold my phone that is connected to my Microcell that gets 5 full bars, you know - holding it like I am NOT suppose to?

I lose all bars and it goes to NO SERVICE. All this while I am connected to a Microcell.


Apple please explain to me how that is a software problem? It's not just my new iPhone 4. It's also my brothers new iPhone 4 as well.

Please EXPLAIN THAT TO ME! :rolleyes: What a crock of ****.
 
I hear from some of my tech friends who know about such things that you can easily fix the signal issue and get all your bars back if you drop your iphone in a toilet or a sink full of water.

Then you get one, solid bar. It will never lose any bars after that.

I haven't tried it yet, because I'm at work, but when I get home I'm going to see if it works. It makes sense.

also, I am sorry for all of you who just bought the new iPod Touch With 2-Year Contract and 3 Month Exclusivity Window, because really, that's what you just bought. It just says "iPhone" on the back.
 
mjteggy05 said:
The biggest problem here is that AT&T's service has sucked, but Apple basically hid that (rightly or wrongly), so many people were happily making calls with '1 bar' of service when the phone was displaying 4 or 5.
Click to expand...

If this is true, and if this statement is read as a slap in the face of AT&T as the network provider, then this might be the biggest indication yet of a Verizon iPhone.
 
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