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

[spiritlevel]

While I accept that bars are currently calculated incorrectly, (probably done deliberately as someone said earlier, to make the reception on the iPhone 3g look good) this does not address the fundamental problem:

Bridging the antennas by touching the lower left corner of the phone causes the effective length of the 3g antenna to change, thereby detuning it leading to signal attenuation of 20-24 db.

As stated in the Anandtech article, the iPhone 4 is far more susceptible to attenuation when held than any other phone.

Having this "killswitch" in a place where it is very likely to be touched when held normally is a fundamental design flaw.

I honestly don't think this problem will be properly fixed without a redesign of the antenna system. Apple know this - that's why they have taken the position they have.

Even if they did a recall, what would they do to all these phones to fix them? they can't replace a faulty part with a good one because it's not the parts, it's the design.

Anandtech said that the antenna should have had a non conductive coating applied to it but my gut feeling is that this would be too thin to really make much difference (although it would probably have helped a bit). You don't even need to actually touch the antenna to have an effect on it.

I found that by using a gel case, which is about 1mm thick, the problem is still there but reduced by about half.

Unfortunately, because of this fundamental design flaw, the only answer (as Apple have said themselves) is to hold it different or get a case. A case doesn't fix the problem, but it does turn an unusable phone (for many people) into a usable one.

A bumper should therefore be included in the box. It is the decision Apple have made to charge extra for these that actually bothers me the most as, for many people, the phone doesn't function as advertised without it.

 

[tgildred]

I might actually believe it. I was at the Apple store where my iPhone 3G was showing 1 bar and the iPhone 4 showed 3-4. When I held the phone in my left had, the bars dropped dramatically. One thing I still don't understand is how holding the phone will cause the OS to recalculate the number of bars differently.

I think because holding the phone in that manner will make many phones lose some signal reception. I can make my 3Gs drop one bar by holding it in the same position. If the calculation is wrong on the iPhone 4, it might be misrepresenting that overall signal drop in those same circumstances?

My guess. I have no real idea.

 

[uberamd]

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.

What you say seems very correct and I had been suspecting that. My iPhone 4 showed 5 bars in my office while my Nexus One flirts around 3. Side by side, same AT&T 3G, both devices being tested at the same time.

What still baffles me is that even with 3 bars of 3G, my data is instantly cutoff when I touch that spot. It doesn't slow down, it instantly stops. My Nexus One doesn't do that.

 

[Master Chief]

The only reason or way why that could be the case is if the data speed and connection would be dependent on the same calculation of signal strength... Somehow I don´t believe that.

The current formula basically means: No Signal Bars = No Signal = Drop Call so yeah, the new formula will fix this problem.

 

[kevinbal]

So what will 500,000 returns in one month mean?

Complete hyperbole, no way 25% of the iPhones are going to be "returned" in a month. Returned for what? an HTC? AT&T Go-phone?

 

[locust76]

One thing I still don't understand is how holding the phone will cause the OS to recalculate the number of bars differently.

It doesn't. Read Anandtech's writeup on the iPhone's signal reporting algorithm.

In essence, the total signal available to the iPhone can drop by as much as 50% before the iPhone starts reporting anything less than 5 bars. From 4 all the way to 1 is pretty much the ultra-low end of the spectrum, so if you have 4 bars, you've already got comparatively weak signal (it's not 80% as 4/5 would suggest, but closer to 40%). You can reliably make and receive calls at 2 bars or even 1 bar, but seeing 3 or 4 bars suddenly drop is shocking, considering people think that it's actually a realistic measurement of signal.

So yes, there IS a software "issue," (more like a quirk) but it's really entirely cosmetic. It won't help the people losing signal by touching the "bad spot," it will only show them less bars from the get-go instead of "lying" to them and telling them they have "full signal."

 

[hackum]

Parts of the release that scream BS to me:

we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them.

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong.

Yeah right ... So now they have admitted they had been displaying the wrong signal strength for 3 years (for one reason or another, most likely to show off).

Well, if they weren't able to detect this 'error' in 3 years, how about a design flaw of the current innovative antenna design, which hasn't been tested so long?

Makes you wonder. I am not buying it.

 

[joelk]

Originally Posted by phpmaven
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.

I agree however the word "erroneously" implies that there is a right and wrong way to correlate bars to signal strength. I think it is more likley someone thought it would be a great idea to artificially bump up the bars in weak signal areas to give the appearance of better phone reception ("wow apple sure have improved the reception on this new phone... 5 bars where i didn't get them before"); however they didn't think about the problem this would create in areas of marginal signal strength... a precipitous drop in bars. i.e. if this is true then it wasn't a mistake in software design but an oversight of the consequences of trying to pull a fast one. Beyond that there is the fundamental testable issue of dropped calls... if that is truly worse (no idea) then you can play with the bars all you want and it won't make the problem go away.

 

[Sedulous]

I don't buy it either. But I also could not get the phenomenon to happen myself even holding the same phone that someone else was able to "death grip".

 

[Dr Kevorkian94]

so the crappy reception when holding the left corner wont be fixed but now we will know more accurately that we have a bad signal. thats just peachy

 

[deannnnn]

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 doubt that very much.

The majority of people that don't sit on tech sites all day like us may have "heard something about weird signal problems" but it won't stop them from buying an iPhone if they want one because frankly, they don't care.

 

[netsyd]

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything,

That's problem with testing in the lab... to Apple it all looks great because its being tested in a bubble. They need to test things out in the real world without a case on it like they did before launch to see the problem.

Now also in Apple's defense here - they "MAY" be right. I'm not saying they are, but its possible. Here's why:

My house has notoriously poor signal. So I bought a 3G Microcell. If I'm at the edge of the microcell's range and I cup the phone I drop bars. If I go into the same room as the Microcell or into the room next to it and I cup the phone, I get no loss in bars.

 

[uberamd]

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

The only people that complain about AT&T are iPhone users. My sister and mom both have Blackberry devices and never complain. My friend has a generic device on AT&T and never complains. My boss has a generic phone on AT&T and never complains.

iPhone users seem to be the only ones b***hing about dropped calls and low service. Maybe... just maybe that means that it always has been more of an iPhone thing.

(Disclaimer: I have NO issues with AT&T both at home in Minneapolis area (decent sized city) and at school/work in a northern area of Minnesota in a smaller sized city AT&T has been wonderful for me, sans the iPhone 4 issue)

 

[TreeFiddy]

So what will 500,000 returns in one month mean?

We'll never know, because that will never happen.

 

[RiceRacerDX]

The current formula basically means: No Signal Bars = No Signal = Drop Call so yeah, the new formula will fix this problem.

The current formula is weak signal = lie to us and show 4-5 bars = Apple claims improved signal.

The new formula will be weak signal = few bars = basically no improvement from previous models = false claims.

 

[Bodhi395]

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.

They only bitch because they love!

If this phone sucked in other ways, then returning it would be a no brainer. However, it excels so much in so many other ways, that they want to keep it.

People don't want to give up on Apple or the iPhone all together simply because of this one issue, I know I don't. But that seems to be the position some are taking... either accept it or get the hell out and never come back. That seems a ludicrous argument to me.

 

[NoExpectations]

The Real Issue

I touch (bridge) both external antennas, call is dropped. There is no other phone out there, on any provider, that acts the same way.

Design flaw. Shame on Apple.

 

[dijisurf]

radiation

apple is looking for more antena enginers because US and EU laws are changing, where companies have to show raditaion levels for each phone sold. Apple is clearly seeing this and wants to create the most efficient phone with least amount of radiation.
Be smart people.

 

[Shanewilliams]

I bought apples return policy was 30 days, but on my iPhone 4 receipt it says return date July 8th. Which would be 14 days. Does it vary by state??

 

[uberamd]

Am I the only one who thought the wording in this press release seemed a little un-Apple like?

 

[rwilliams]

I'm interested to see how many people give Apple a free pass for rigging the signal strength display for 3 years.

 

[azboricua]

This statement doesnt do anything other than make Apple and AT&T look worse. So in reality, when you hold the phone a certain way and your bars lower to 2, you really should not have any bars. Woo hoo, wait, ah *****, no bars!

Apple's take: It AT&T's fault, Everyone who has an iphone 4 is in an area with weak signal.

AT&T take: TBD

 

[mytdave]

bunch of crap

BS. Apple is in full cover-up mode. Yes, sure, it is possible that their display algorithm is all screwed up... but that is a separate issue. Changing the algorithm wont change the attenuation problem, it will only display it differently. It doesn't matter what the graph on the phone shows, either the signal attenuates or it does not (call works, or call drops).

This is so simple. It does not matter who you are (Apple, HTC, Nokia, whoever), if you have an exposed antenna and a person can touch the metal parts, it will affect signal strength. It's plain physics, and there is no way around it.

Ironically, signal usually improves when a person touches an antenna, however, on the iPhone 4, there are multiple antennas around the perimeter of the phone, so when your skin comes in contact with more than one, it is effectively shorting the signal to ground (it's not actually ground, but electrically different enough to dramatically cut the signal).

The only way to fix this is to put a coating on the exposed antennas. That would require a recall or issuing free 'bumpers' to everyone. Apple needs to suck this up and do the right thing.

 

[jntdigital]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; es-es) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

HTC, Motorola, and Nokia are just loving this.

man, Im still rocking an iPhone 2G! I thought I was going to be able to upgrade it.

 

[photomac]

Total bull crap!!!!

This is total bull crap as apple looks to be scrambling to come up with an excuse to cover their ass sorry I'm not drinking the apple aid on this one!