Consumer Report iPhone 4 Testing Flawed

[dethmaShine]

http://mobileanalyst.wordpress.com/...eport-consumer-reports-study-is-full-of-crap/

Let me start off by saying that for much of my career, I worked as an electromagnetic engineer working on exactly the kind of issues that now face Apple on the iPhone4. But this isn’t about me. It is about Consumer Reports and its not so scientific testing on the iPhone 4.

Consumer reports “RF” engineers should know better than to think they can run an engineering grade test for an issue like this in a shielded room. And certainly not one with people in it.

To even reasonably run a scientific test, the iPhone should have been sitting on a non-metallic pedestal inside an anechoic chamber. The base station simulator should have been also sitting outside the chamber and had a calibrated antenna plumbed to it from inside the chamber.

I have not seen (update: i have seen the full video since yesterday afternoon) CR’s claim directly that the finger effect reduces the iPhones sensitivity by 20db as reported elsewhere, but unless CR connected to a functional point inside the iPhone that number is fantasy. Even the way they seem to have tested the change – by varying the base station simulator levels – seems to assume the iPhone receiver and/or transmitter operate in a linear fashion (the same way) across all signal strengths – bad assumption.

Bottom line. From what I can see in the reports, Consumer Reports replicated the same uncontrolled, unscientific experiments that many of the blogging sites have done.

I’m not saying that Apple has no h/w problem and they surely have a s/w issue. But I’m still wondering that if the software signal algorithm was not AFU’d in the first place how many, if anyone would talking about this “problem”

I also don’t know what part of this problem is Apple’s and what part is related to the AT&T network.

And we don’t know how the observed effect is, or is not, similar to other devices.

We also don’t know if placing a finger on the antenna bridge is detuning the antenna or detuning the receiver itself.

And neither does Consumer Reports.

Oh. Mr Job’s, right now, silence is not golden. I’m quite sure Apple has these answers by now… If not, send me a few more iPhones ( i bought 3). I’ll find a chamber and get you some answers in a day.

Ps. Blogged from my Iphone4 in a rest area on my way home from work, cause I just couldn’t help myself..

 

[timbloom]

http://mobileanalyst.wordpress.com/...eport-consumer-reports-study-is-full-of-crap/

It's nice and all, but real-world usage doesn't in any way mirror lab testing.