Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Bumper doesn't fix antenna

P

proathlete03

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 10, 2007
57
0
Just to everyone here who's trying to find a bumper, I cupped mine in the bottom of my hand and the signal goes from 5 bars down to 1. When hold the phone normally its fine, just when cupping the bottom does it really have an issue. Interesting!

Maybe it really is a software miscalculation? Or maybe we got screwed again.

Just received my bumper today...
 
Don't cup the bottom. Hold the bottom normally, like you would if you were using the phone normally, and see what happens.

Cupping the bottom is like wrapping it in lead. Of course it will attenuate the signal. There's no way for the signal to get around your hand.

The issue without a bumper was that holding the phone normally would attenuate signal because you were touching the bands together. The bumper largely solves that. But "cupping" is an unnatural hold and therefore not really a fair test.

Also, forget the bars, run Speedtest both ways and see what happens.
 
Just because yours doesn't work, it doesn't mean it wont work for everybody else.


It fixed the issue for me perfectly.
 
I just got my 32 gig yesterday morning. I had received my black bumper a couple days earlier.

I synced my phone and then put the bumper on. it has only been off once....just now for a test.

I am sitting in our office in our home. I get full five bars of 3G.

With my Bumper case on I can put the phone in the wrong-handed death grip. After five minutes I got tired of watching the bars do nothing. Stayed at 5 bars of 3G

I take the Bumper off and do the same test...awkward death grip... and I get different results. Within a minute it drops down to 1-2 bars. I say awkward death grip because that is not the way I hold my phone. It doesn't feel natural. I hold it in my left hand will surfing and such....but with a pretty loose grip. When I am talking I hold it with my right.

My point to my rambling. IN MY CASE...no pun intended....the Bumper case solves a problem I really don't have. I intend to keep it on anyway because I actually like it....atleast until the next case I like better comes along...and the next one and the next one. :D I love the look of the naked phone...but it actually feels better...and more secure in my hand...with a case on it.

P.S. Yes I know it is a "nice story bro" and yes I'm a Fanboy!

Steve
 
Keep in mind that the bumper will only reduce the amount of attenuation since you won't also be acting like a conductor across the gap.

You will still see bars drop in areas you get 1-4 bars (and in areas where you are borderline 5 bars). Calls should be fine as long as you can hold onto a bar or two.

In an unrelated, but coincidental issue, 3G data is currently suffering on AT&T's network in some areas of the country. I can be in really good reception areas, bars don't drop if I grip the phone, but data throughput is terrible no matter how I hold the phone. I move to a different tower with the same reception strength, and data is blazing fast. Rather annoying. But it is something AT&T is aware of and working on.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8A293)

I tried one yesterday and I'm returning it because it does nothing for my iPhone. Hoping a different case will work.
And for you smart mouths out there, I'm not holding my phone in any awkward way , it's just resting in my left hand like my 3GS.
 
Goaliegeek said:
You just live in a weak reception area.
Click to expand...

By "cupping", do you mean holding it normal or do you mean surrounding the whole bottom end of the phone like a, well, cup? Like your holding a firefly? My old 3G will slowly drop bars if I do that.

Case or no case, if you surround the whole antenna area with human flesh, your absorbing a good bit of the radiation that is supposed to travel freely.

Maybe I'm understanding you wrong.
 
TruckdriverSean said:
By "cupping", do you mean holding it normal or do you mean surrounding the whole bottom end of the phone like a, well, cup? Like your holding a firefly? My old 3G will slowly drop bars if I do that.

Case or no case, if you surround the whole antenna area with human flesh, your absorbing a good bit of the radiation that is supposed to travel freely.

Maybe I'm understanding you wrong.
Click to expand...

Correct. I did it on purpose as a test. When I do the same to my iPhone 3G / 3GS it doesn't do this at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back